


the smell of farewell and gasoline

by Coshledak



Category: Supernatural, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Crossover, Demonic Possession, Established Relationship, F/M, M/M, Multi, Possession, Slash, Torture, time skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-28
Updated: 2012-07-27
Packaged: 2017-11-08 19:04:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/446468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coshledak/pseuds/Coshledak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the summer before his pack is due to head off to their separate colleges, but something is killing people in Beacon Hills. So when Dean Winchester shows up to investigate, Derek is confronted with something new.</p><p>And something old.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place two years after the current canon in Teen Wolf. No specific plot point in Supernatural.

No matter how many years he'd been in this game, being called to the suburbs— _any_ suburbs anywhere—was always the weirdest. There was something about the evenly spaced street lamps and too-similar houses that gave him the chills. He hadn't encountered any yet, but it was just a matter of time before some freaky Stepford Wives deal showed up. Seeing as he was pretty sure he'd seen everything by this point, he was willing to bet it was going to be sooner than he wanted to think about.

“Why do they always pick suburbs? Lilith holed up in a suburb too. Took up the entire damn place with her creepy minions and then played _normal_ with a psycho chic twist.” If he never had to deal with another demon who favored little girls again, it would be too soon.

“There's no guarantee that the demon we're looking for is here.”

“C'mon, really?” He twisted in his seat, pulling the Impala to a stop so he could fix the proper 'what the hell is wrong with you' look at his passenger. “Three dead bodies in a month in Stepford, and you're trying to tell me it's _not_ our guy?”

Even in the dark, he could make out the frown. “This isn't Stepford, it's—”

He rolled his eyes, because of course that one would go right over his head. “Beacon Hills, California. I know, Cas.”

“Then why did you—” He waited, could practically feel Cas' eyes narrowing as Dean's attention turned back to driving again. They were supposed to show up forty-five minutes ago. “Was that one of your popular culture references?”

“Good job. I ran out of Skittles back in Nevada, so you'll get a treat when we get there.”

“I don't like the purple ones.”

“I know, honey-bear,” Dean grunted. He was too tired to play nice anymore, and having to squint in the dark for the right house wasn't helping his mood any. By some man-made miracle, Cas fell silent and instead peered out the passenger side window. Dean didn't think he was actually helping until he pointed out a house halfway down the street.

It was almost stomach-churning how inconspicuous the house looked. Dean had a split second, before they slipped out of the car, when he wondered if the guy he'd talked on the phone with a day and a half ago was the same one he remembered. Maybe this would be his Stepford case after all.

Thankfully, that concern was expunged the second the door opened.

“You're late,” were the first two words out of his mouth. Dean was halfway to an apology when a smile broke out across the older man's face. He was pulled into a half-hug. The sort of hug that made him realize exactly how stiff and tired he was from driving. “Come on in, you look like hell.”

There was already a beer—that Dean didn't need but also couldn't refuse—open for him when he got into the kitchen. He spent the next fifteen minutes explaining Castiel to the skeptical faces of his old friends. At the same time, Castiel seemed utterly fascinated by the well-maintained interior of the house. Dean couldn't blame him; it wasn't like he'd seen the inside of an _actual_ home before. Not unless Bobby's counted. Which it did and didn't.

Hospitality aside, Dean would pick Bobby's place over the suburbs any day of the week.

Around the fifteen minute mark was when he heard shuffling just outside the kitchen. He twisted just in time to see a teenage girl pawing at her eyes in the light.

“Dad?” She looked to Dean, then to Cas. “Who're they?”

Exhaustion and alcohol catching up with him, Dean managed a tired smile as he stood up and offered his hand.

“Hi, I'm Dean Winchester. You must be Allison.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I just want to thank everyone for the positive response this fic has gotten. I wasn't expecting much attention at all from just a 640 word prologue, but you guys were very kind!
> 
> I just want to leave a few notes about this fanfiction before this chapter:
> 
> One, it follows the canon provided up until S2E5 of Teen Wolf aside from a few minor adjustments. This is an AU that I'm slowly working through in my head. For this reason, Isaac, Erica and Boyd aren't present. As interesting as that would have been, there are only so many characters I feel up to handling. Derek's pack consists of: Scott, Allison, Stiles, Jackson, Lydia, and Danny. Allison, Stiles, and Lydia are human. Scott, Derek, and Danny are werewolves. Jackson is the Kanima with some of my personal headcanon provided for his development.
> 
> Two, Sammy won't be present unless I manage to sneak him in through a phone call. Don't get me wrong, I like Sammy, but I didn't want to have too much going on. For now, it's just Cas and Dean running this mission. Sorry if that bugs you, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.
> 
> Three, this takes place two years after the current Teen Wolf canon. Things have happened in those two years that are alluded to throughout the fic. The younger members of Derek's pack are between eighteen-nineteen, Derek is twenty-five. I don't have a specific place in mind for where this falls in the SPN canon, except that it's after Lilith and apparently Beacon Hills is immune to the apocalypse. Go figure.
> 
> Four, I Lydia/Jackson/Danny'd. I don't want any pairing surprises, but you should know that some relationships will be more subtle than others. If you think something won't be your style, then feel free not to read. However, aside from Derek/Stiles and Scott/Allison, most of the other pairings will be pretty minor and easy enough to ignore if you want.
> 
> Five, the title of this fanfiction comes from the song "The Last Firstborn" by Celldweller.

The Beacon Hills' woods were still fresh despite the fact that the rain storm had passed a day ago now; it wasn't helping Derek's mood. Unfortunately, the crispness brought by the rain had, more or less, washed away any potential scent trail. He'd spent all of yesterday trying to pick up even a trace of the smell he was looking for. It had been more due to accident that he'd found what he was looking for, not that he'd told that to Stiles when he'd called him. Technicalities weren't important.

He could feel it when his pack stepped into his territory, dragging their feet over conversation that Derek couldn't yet hear but could sense in the moist air all the same. He pried his phone out of his pocket again, tapping the screen and bringing up the time. The perils of having a pack full of teenagers meant that punctuality wasn't one of their strong suits—particularly in the mornings. 

On a better day, he'd have taken it as a win that they showed up before noon, but not today.

“Where the hell have you been?”

Allison was the only one who had the intelligence to at least feign being surprised; it quickly morphed to apologetic. Stiles didn't even look at him, but Derek suspected that was for an entirely different reason. Scott, ever the quick one to rebel against everything Derek said or did, was the first to reply.

“It's seven in the morning on a Saturday! The last time I had to wake up this early on a Saturday was for lacrosse practice,” he snapped. Derek's eyes dipped down to where Allison's hand was tucked alongside Scott's in his pocket. Two years and the two of them still acted like they would implode the second they weren't touching each other. It was an unwelcome miracle that Argent hadn't taken Scott's head off yet.

“C'mon, dude, you texted us at like three. There's only so much we can do on short notice,” Stiles said, shrugging. He still wasn't looking at Derek.

Derek's shoulders crept towards his ears, a growl threatening his words. “Just forget it. We've got over a mile to walk—let's go.”

He felt the stutter in Stiles' heartbeat as he twisted around, tramping over the wet leaves and sticks. Behind him, Allison and Scott slipped into a conversation that Derek didn't care enough to listen to. After the one time he had made the mistake of listening in at the wrong moment, he'd elected never to do it again unless he picked up traces of something important. Thus far, it just sounded like a lot of grumbling about having to be awake so early.

“Hey.” Stiles' shoulder bumped into his from behind, light but seeking attention. It still threw him off sometimes, the couple of inches Stiles had gained in the past two years. “What's going on with you?”

“I could ask you the same question,” he grunted. “Having some trouble looking at me this morning?”

Stiles hesitated, and Derek saw the flicker of movement out of his eye that said he was nervously scratching the back of his neck. “You're, uh, just particularly radiant today?”

Couple of inches or not, some things never changed.

Derek cast a glance over his shoulder, for once glad that Scott and Allison seemed more invested in each other than anything else around them. He had less issue turning his attention to Stiles then. 

“Where the hell were you last night? Or the night before that, for that matter?” Stiles was back to not looking at him, which really just made Derek want to slam him into the nearest tree so he didn't have a choice. But there were certain things even two hormonally obsessed teenagers would notice.

“Careful Derek, or the little forest creatures might start to think you're the clingy girlfriend type.” The joke was half-hearted at best, but it was enough. 

Derek grabbed his arm, earning a startled yelp before he even started dragging Stiles slightly off their path. He heard Scott perk to attention behind them. He was only passively aware of Stiles waving him off. Scott's heartbeat didn't go down, but he listened. He'd gotten better at listening since he started picking up on Derek's scent all over Stiles. Even Scott couldn't ignore what that particular instinct was telling him.

Derek shoved him against a tree, hanging back as Stiles flailed for his balance. “Talk.”

“There's nothing to talk about, alright? I'm sorry I didn't come over last night—”

“When you said you would,” Derek clarified. “It's one thing to just not come over, Stiles. The point is that you told me you were going to, and you didn't. That's not like you.”

Stiles rubbed at his forehead when he stepped closer; Derek half expected to be shoved away the second he got in arms distance. Instead, when Stiles reached out, it was to curl his fingers in the pockets of his jacket and pull him closer. Derek was annoyed—and the anger stemmed from something deeper that he didn't want to think about—but not unwilling. They were on a hill, so he was careful about pressing Stiles against the tree, twitching his fingers at his sides before settling them on Stiles' hips.

“I'm sorry, really.” Stiles scratched at his forehead, and as he dropped his hand back to his side he made a foreign gesture with it. “It's just all these bodies and stuff have got my dad wound up pretty tight, you know? I didn't want to leave him alone last night. They haven't got any leads or anything.”

Stiles' knees knocked against Derek's legs as he shifts, nervous and fidgety, his fingers playing at the cloth lining of the jacket pockets. This was familiar, and alongside Stiles' excuses it just made sense. So Derek was back to feeling like a bit of an ass, which meant things were normal.

“It's fine.”

Brown eyes finally met his for the first time that day, and there was a look in them that Derek was becoming increasingly used to. 

“Really?” Stiles tilted his chin up, but his eyes dropped down to Derek's lips. “Because I was prepared to make it up to you and everything.”

“Is that so?”

“Yep. Too bad, I guess you're not—”

Derek was all too happy to put an end to that train of thought, catching Stiles' lips mid-word. He drew in a deep breath through his nose, drawing the scent deep where he could carry it around for a few days. These murders had the entire town riled up, and Derek wasn't any different. But Stiles smell was calming, if only because his presence commonly invited a different sort of chaos.

“Seriously?” Scott's complaint was followed by Allison's giggling, turning the kiss into a short-lived experience. Derek drew back with a sigh, only becoming aware that Stiles' hands had been moved to his hips when he started to move. The touch disappeared easily enough, but he felt the warmth for a few more seconds as he trekked back up the hill. “How come we don't get to make out during official pack business?”

“Because it'll turn into having sex on the forest floor,” Derek grunted. He turned around just in time to catch Stiles' windmill arm motions. Derek caught his hand before he toppled backwards, pulling him the last few steps.

“Yeah, and you make out _anyway_ so the rule is pretty much pointless,” Stiles added. 

“So why have it?”

“We need to at least have something to yell at you two about before clothes go flying, traumatizing unsuspecting woodland folk.”

Derek tuned out of the brief argument at that point, instead focusing on making sure they got where they were going. For few minutes, Stiles' fingers stayed loosely laced between his, but eventually the contact drifted apart while he was held back by Scott and Allison. There wasn't a quiet minute during the entire walk, but whatever had done the damage was long gone so the worry of being heard went down substantially. Not even a low breeze was disturbing the calm of the forest.

Scott was the first one to reel back when the scent hit him, even faded as it was. Instead of bringing his own arm to cover his face, he brought up Allison's. 

“Oh _man_! What's that rancid smell?”

“What we're looking for,” Derek replied, his expression hardening.

The body was fresh, left just after the rain but still affected by the settling moisture in the air, and grim. Whatever had done it hasn't bothered with a clean kill, but the attack wasn't right for animal either.

“Wait. _Wait._ ” Stiles said, hanging back with his nose buried in his elbow. “You found another body and you didn't call the _cops_?”

Derek rolled his neck, “You said it yourself that they didn't have any leads. The second they find out about this body, it's gone, and there's nothing we can do!”

“What part about being a wanted fugitive two years ago made you think that this was a good idea? Do you have any idea how this looks?”

“Well I thought that my own pack would know to keep their mouths shut after we looked around,” Derek barked. “Or was that too much to handle for the ones responsible for incriminating me in the first place?”

Stiles fell silent, which Derek would have taken as a spiteful sort of victory if he weren't already at the end of his rope about all of this. 

“The police aren't perfect, Stiles—”

“Just forget it.” Stiles turned on his heel, pacing a few steps away. A growl bubbled in Derek's throat, but it was more at himself than Stiles. He didn't have time for these stupid games.

“You two look over it and see if you can get anything,” he snarled, storming after Stiles.

He hadn't wandered far, not even out of Derek's immediate line of sight. Derek listened to the way Stiles' heart was bouncing around in his chest, like the indecisive beat of an insect's wings. For a second he hesitated, a strange concept for him, but he eventually just wrapped an arm around Stiles' shoulders and pulled him backwards into his chest. A deeper, more feral part of him calmed immediately, so close to the familiar scent and touch. That left the rest of his mind to realize that he _was_ dating the Sheriff's son, so maybe inviting him to the 'skip the police' investigation party wasn't the best idea.

“This is my territory; you know that. If this is something the police can't understand, then I need to sort it out,” Derek argued. 

“Yeah, I know. Alpha wolf responsibility, protecting your turf—”

Derek ducked his head to nuzzle the space behind Stiles' ear. “My pack.”

Stiles' shoulders tensed against his back, his heartbeat giving a blip of attention that made Derek's ears twitch. He exhaled through his nose, some of the warm air bouncing back against his face. Stiles shuddered against him, the tension ebbing away. Then he laughed, low and genuine, and reached over his shoulder to plant his hand awkwardly on Derek's face in an attempt to playfully shove him off.

“Alright, I get it. Alpha knows best.”

Derek grinned, letting Stiles go. “Something like that.”

The pull in his chest satiated, they made their way back to Scott and Allison. She was squatting next to the body, looking ill but determined. Recently the determination was more and more easily overpowering the 'ill.' If there was anything to be said for the Argents, then it was that they were turning her into a hell of a hunter.

Either way, it was a step up from Scott, who looked like he was about to throw up from the smell alone. Derek couldn't blame him; it was offensive, and that was putting it kindly.

“Anything?”

“You mean aside from the pile of rotten eggs this thing is buried on?” Scott asked.

Allison shook her head as she stood up. A second later she tucked some of her hair behind her ear, a motion Derek had long since associated with nerves. “I don't know. It doesn't look like anything I've studied.”

“And it's definitely not something we've encountered before,” Stiles added definitively. The gravity in his voice made Derek ache with tension. “So we can't stop it from killing someone else.”

“We'll find out what it is.”

Derek's fingers pressed into his palm, hard. Whatever did this clearly wasn't planning on leaving any time soon, and, despite the excursion, they weren't any closer to finding it. So far it hadn't targeted anyone in his pack, but he knew it was just a matter of time. If this thing could tear through four humans with so little remorse, then it wouldn't have any qualms about trying out a werewolf.

And he wasn't going to let that happen.


	3. Chapter 3

The Hale house was one-and-a-half years old from the time of its finished renovation. Derek hadn't gone for the shiny new look because he had no interest in selling it. Even though most of his pack would be leaving him by the end of the summer, the house would be his home. Besides, more than a few of them had talked about coming back. It seemed worth it to fix the place up, especially since everything was legally in his name now. Aside from taxes and some utilities, he didn't pay a cent on it.

It took an hour to sort out the business with the police, and it may have taken longer had Stiles not been involved. The story was that they'd all come over for a walk and found the body—simple, eloquent, and technically with a grain of truth involved, seeing as that was precisely how Derek had discovered it. Despite having done this for two years now, Stiles seemed drained by the time they all gathered in the kitchen again. Allison had two cups of coffee waiting for them.

“I thought of something while you guys were out. It might be helpful.” She leaned over the kitchen island, cradling her own mug in her hands. “Last night, these two guys showed up at our house. They were old friends of my dad's—I'm pretty sure they're hunters.”

Derek ground his teeth; the last thing they needed in Beacon Hills was _more_ hunters. The Argents were already itching to complicate things by pointing fingers.

Stiles' hand was an unusual warmth on his the back of his head. The slow shift of his fingers startled Derek from the concentrated surge of rage clouding his skull. He didn't realize he'd started growling until he stopped, and the surprised look dropped from Allison's face.

“I overheard them talking about this demon. They think it's responsible for the murders, but they haven't found any solid proof yet.”

“Great!” Scott threw his hands up. “ _Demons_? Since when do demons come to Beacon Hills?”

“Oh, I can think of a few.”

The tone of Stiles' voice raised the hair along the back of Derek's neck, the chill chasing down his spine and along his arms. Around him, the room lapsed into silence, as if the implication of the words could summon who they referenced. Everything remained still.

It took Derek a full minute to shed the ice that formed under his skin. “Did they mention this demon's name?”

“Yeah.” Allison nodded, seeming to come out of her own distant fog. Scott reached out to rub her shoulders, rocking her gently with the weight of his touch. “Yeah, I think so.”

“What was it?”

Before Allison could reply, there was a knock from the front door, startling all their attention. After a quick, albeit silent, exchange, it was Derek who got up to answer it.

The man on the other side of the door was wearing a suit that looked nice, but not freshly pressed. Derek had barely a second to acknowledge him before a badge was being shoved in his face. He had to lean back a little to clearly see it, and by that point it was being put away.

“Austin Melborne, FBI. Are you the one who found the body?”

Derek's muscles tensed, but not from the question. The guy was _glaring_ at him. He had a prior record in Beacon Hills that almost the entire police department knew about—acquitted or not—and none of them had ever glared at him like that before.

“I've already talked to the police,” he explained. “You can get my statement from them.”

The smile the agent gave him was tight and unamused. “Yeah, I prefer to get it from the source, if you don't mind.”

Derek's eyebrows rose. “I mind.”

Austin's laugh was a replication of his smile, except perhaps slightly more amused. Derek was reminded of the laughs adults gave little smart ass little kids right before they reminded them who was really in charge. Eyes trailed over his face, like Austin was looking for something—or like he'd already found it.

“Listen, Mr. Hale, it's pretty damn suspicious that all of these bodies seem to be popping up in the woods around your house—”

“They're the _woods,_ ” Derek pointed out. “The only other option is to dump them in someone's perfectly maintained lawn. And that would be a little obvious, don't you think?”

“You're really not making my job easy.”

“I told you: I gave my statement to the police,” Derek said slowly. “If you want it, talk to them—”

“ _That's the hunter._ ”

It was Allison's voice, no more than a whisper from the other room. She was closer than the kitchen, but Derek wasn't surprised by the fact that they'd crept into the hallway. Teenagers had the insatiable urge to eavesdrop; in a town like this, it was almost a requirement.

“ _You're sure?_ ” Scott.

“ _I know that voice. He's definitely the hunter who came to my house._ ”

“Mr. Hale?”

Derek pulled back to attention, his eyes finding Austin's again. 

“I'm sorry, can I see your badge again?” Austin's head turned off to the side, exasperated, but he reached for his badge anyway. Derek looked at it properly this time. “And what was your name? I can't make it out.”

He frowned. “Special Agent Austin Melborne.”

Derek straightened up, flashing a momentary smile as he tilted his head. He crossed his arms over his stomach. “You're lying.”

“Excuse me?”

“You. Are. _Lying._ ”

For a moment, the—now nameless—agent's face was indiscernible. Derek couldn't make out what he was thinking, aside from the fact that his heartbeat was a little quicker than it had been earlier. Then the man smiled, exhaling a huff of laughter. He sounded impressed.

After a pause, as though he were sizing Derek up again, he muttered, “Cute.” 

Derek scowled, holding his ground even as the hunter leaned forward. “But see—all the cops think I'm the real deal. So what are you going to tell them? That you heard my heart skip a beat because of your freak show, werewolf powers?” 

A growl started low in his throat, but before he had the time to make a threat, there was a hand settling against his shoulder-blade. He nearly jerked to roar at whoever it was, but then the hand slid up to his shoulder and squeezed, affectionate and calming.

“Actually, can I see that?” Stiles asked, reaching for the badge. “I've never seen an actual badge in person before.”

Before the hunter could snatch it away, Stiles had it in his hands. He was pouring over it on the edge of Derek's vision, but Derek didn't like having someone so dangerous so close to Stiles. Particularly not when the guy gave off a vibe that wasn't at all like Chirs Argent—a vibe that said monsters were monsters, and he'd already filed Derek away in that category. 

After a minute, Stiles shrugged and passed it back. “Looks like I still haven't.”

Derek blinked. “What?”

The hunter took the badge back, and there was another stutter in his heartbeat. Stiles continued, unable to hear anything of the sort. “It's a fake. I spent a summer researching badges and how to tell fakes. That one's the best I've ever seen, but it's still a fake. Wow, I used the word ‘fake’ a lot right there.”

“And how do you figure that?” Just the sound of the hunter's voice riled Derek up.

“Well I said it like—” The hunter’s eyes narrowed and Stiles laughed, awkward. “Oh, right, you probably mean the—yeah—well, okay, _aside_ from Derek's awesome werewolf powers telling him that you're lying?” Stiles grinned, the sort of expression that said he was pretty damn pleased with himself. Derek might have rolled his eyes if Stiles' expertise didn't have the potential to save his ass right now. “Well, if I told you that, then you'd just find a way to fix it. And seeing as that would pretty much make me an accessory to a felony—not happening.”

Derek didn't like the look that formed on the hunter's face as he sized up Stiles. Impulsively—possessively—he reached out to settle a hand on the small of Stiles' back, fingers curling loosely in his hoodie. When the attention turned to him, it was significantly less impressed.

“You have something to do with this, and I'm going to figure out what.” It was a promise.

Derek scowled. “Being a werewolf doesn't make me a killer.”

The hunter shook his head. “You can't help it. It's what you are.”

Finally, Derek did snarl, the power and rage surging to red in his eyes. “You don't have a clue what I am.”

But the hunter was already turning to go, making a vague gesture over his shoulder. “You aren't the first monster I've met trying to play house, Derek. It's just a matter of time.”

\-------------------------------------------------------

According to Allison, the hunter's name was Dean Winchester, and he had quite the track record. Unlike the Argents, who specialized in werewolves, Dean hunted anything and everything. Typically he worked with his brother, Sam, but the guy he'd brought into town with him on this particular mission was a strange man named Castiel. From what Allison could figure, he was an angel.

They were hunting a demon named Mundus, but Dean wasn't known for leaving behind 'monsters' in the cities he blew through. Derek couldn't say they would have gotten along even if he had been human. Stiles insisted, before he had to go for his shift at the library, that Dean and Derek were too similar to get along. It was the first time in six months—of their now almost year-long relationship—that he'd honestly threatened to rip Stiles' throat out. A simple 'shut up' just didn't seem like it would do the trick.

With his pack gone for a few hours—Jackson, Lydia, and Danny would all be out on college visits until tomorrow, at the very earliest, and next week at the latest—Derek took the time to work off some steam. The entire basement had been converted into something of a recreational room, with obstacle courses set up for training and weights for general workouts. He no longer had to use the door-frame for his chin-ups, and he could do push ups without scattering dust everywhere. 

So, he took advantage and tried to work off some of the anxiety that had settled between his shoulder-blades and gripped his spine in a vice. Unluckily, working out didn’t help him get any answers for what was going on. It was a pitiful distraction, really.

Stiles' shift ended at 10PM, and while Derek was not usually one for so much concern, he couldn't shake the need to go see him. Thus far, there wasn't any pattern to the victims, nothing to say that he _should_ worry, but it was hard not to. All of the bodies had been savagely eviscerated, if the newspaper reports were anything to go by, and that concept didn't sit lightly with him. The last time something in Beacon Hills had behaved so brutally, it was Jackson, before they'd figured out how to control him in his Kanima form. But this wasn't another Kanima.

He tried not to think about anything like that happening to one of his pack—to Stiles—because he wanted to believe they could take care of themselves. He had to.

The downstairs lights were on when he reached the Stilinski home, and the faint scent of cooked meat was filtering through the open living room window. Stiles showed up in the doorway, starving to the point that he hadn't even taken his library-issued name tag off yet.

“Why do you still knock?” He waved Derek inside, bumping the door shut behind him. 

“You've never told me not to,” Derek replied, because it was technically the truth. For a moment Stiles looked like he was going to argue, then his brows furrowed in thought. Eventually it amounted to a shrug and Derek following him back to the kitchen.

“Well, I'm telling you now.”

He took a seat at the table, watching Stiles wander back over to the pan going on the stove. The tell-tale crackle of meat being cooked was tempting to his senses, but his stomach didn't have the slightest reaction. He hadn't had much of an appetite all day, now that he thought about it. Weirdly, Stiles seemed too absorbed in what he was doing to ask if he wanted anything.

The silence that filtered in the space between them wasn't uncomfortable, but it carried a shadow. Normally he didn't mind the quiet, but this was different. With every second of nothing but bubbling fat between them, a molecule of himself was shifting off kilter.

“You're being quiet,” he pointed out, thrown off by his own uncharacteristic desperation to hear _something_.

Stiles tensed, just a flicker of motion in his shoulders, and relaxed. “Am I?” He laughed, genuine but sheepish. “Sorry, man, I'm starving. Between our nature-walk-featuring-dead-body and work, I didn't get the chance to eat.”

Derek frowned as he got to his feet, crossing the kitchen and planting himself against the counter. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, dude. Totally.” 

“Then why did your heart just speed up?”

Stiles paused halfway towards reaching the knob on the stove, two seconds passing before he flicked it off and moved the pan away from the burner. Caution wove through Derek's muscles, pulling on his instincts.

“ _Stiles._ ”

“It was just freaky, okay?” The words came out in a rush, something caught between afraid and ashamed. Derek straightened up. “The way that body was—and the _smell_? I mean, we've never dealt with demons before. Okay, well, I've kicked their asses in video games, but I'm not so sure my awesomeness extends quite that far out of the pixels. I'm going to need an enchanted demon sword or a whip named Vampire Killer or—”

Derek could feel Stiles' elevated pulse in his ears, rapidly approaching the pattern he associated with Stiles' panic attacks. He stepped forward without thinking, wrapping his arm across Stiles' shoulders and pulling him into his chest again. Stiles kept talking; Derek could feel his shoulders threatening to heave.

“This is _real life_ , Derek, and we don't even know what the thing _looks_ like or what it wants.”

“We'll figure it out.” Derek avoided putting even the smallest space for debate in his words. 

“Yeah, well, I'd prefer it if we could do it before another body showed up.”

“We will. I promise.”

He'd had enough experience with bad promises to know that he shouldn't have said it, but he couldn't help it. Not when Stiles was careening towards a panic attack like it was his one true goal in life. The freak-out seemed out of place, given everything else they'd seen over these past two years, but this whole situation _was_ different. 'Demon' was such a vague term; they didn't even know where to start looking.

Derek dropped his arms and let Stiles get back to the process of making his dinner, occupying himself by heading for the living room. He flung his jacket over the back of the couch and picked up the remote, flipping on the news only in the pursuit of any updates on the case. Five minutes later, Stiles was dropping onto the couch next to him. The only disconcerting part was that the food was already gone, and he was licking his fingers.

“It's more than just the demon thing,” he confessed. Derek looked over just in time to see Stiles sucking the tip of his finger clean. Juvenile action aside, his eyes were distant, focusing on the table and somewhere past it at the same time. “This new hunter—Dean, or whatever his name is—he's not like Mr. Argent. He seems more like—”

“Don't.”

The word jumped off of Derek's tongue like a frog making the leap for its prey. He couldn't stop it, but he wasn't sure why he would have wanted to either. It wasn't something he wanted to discuss: not now, not ever again.

“We can't just ignore it, Derek. This guy could be serious trouble, right?”

“They're _all_ serious trouble! I've told you that from the beginning.”

He pushed himself off the couch, body suddenly dancing with pinpricks of electricity. The comparison alone made his skin crawl, recalling the memory of writhing around on the floor of his own home, body overcome with spasms that he couldn't temper. He fisted his hands at his sides, tried to work the energy towards his fingertips and out of his body entirely, but it wasn't going anywhere. It had nowhere _to_ go.

Then, just like before, a hand was pressed to his shoulder-blade. He froze, stock still, as Stiles wrapped his arms around his waist and pressed his nose into his back. It was cold, sending a tremor through Derek from the point of contact outward. A wave went through his entire body, pushing the overzealous lightning out of his system and leaving him relaxed and detached.

“I don't like talking about her.”

“Yeah, I know,” Stiles sighed, his breath teasing through Derek's shirt. “But that's what happens when you date a guy who likes talking as much as I do. So, really, you kind of brought this on yourself. I think this qualifies as self harm.”

“Shut up, Stiles.”

“Just making a point.”

Derek sighed then, rolling his neck as a substitute for his shoulders for what little it mattered. Stiles loosened his hold enough to move around to Derek's front, then tightened his arms again. Stiles' heartbeat was steady against Derek's chest, pulsing strong and even until it was the only sound in his ears. It became the only sound in the whole world to matter.

They ended up on the couch in a matter of minutes, Derek's head resting against Stiles' thigh and Stiles' fingers pushing through his hair. He didn't like to admit that he enjoyed any sort of contact that could qualify as petting, but he did. By some miracle, Stiles was smart enough not to press him about it either. So Derek got to relax on the couch—or rather, he relaxed by his body's own volition—without worrying about Stiles' comments. The news was the only sound in the room.

The torrid thoughts were soothed by the slow movements of Stiles' hands, the way his short nails scraped across his scalp on random passes. His mind drifted, disjointed, and focused on the news but no longer so intensely that he hung on every word. It wasn't until he heard the front door opening that he came back into himself, and even then it was just the stark awareness of someone encroaching on his territory. The instinct to defend ebbed away before he even moved to sit up, his wolf calmed by the safe scent of Sheriff Stilinski.

Derek felt Stiles twist around as much as he could without dislodging him, but Stiles didn't even get the chance to open his mouth before Mr. Stilinski was cutting him off. “No, we are not talking about the investigation.”

“Hey! I was just going to say that there was some dinner in the fridge if you were hungry.”

Derek couldn't see it, but he could feel the look Mr. Stilinski was fixing on his son. Stiles slumped back into the couch.

“Okay, and maybe I was going to bribe you into talking with a bleu cheese burger. But I can see that's not going to work, and it still doesn't erase the fact that I made you dinner!”

“I thought I raised you better than to bribe an elected official?”

“Derek's a bad influence.”

“Stiles,” Derek growled. 

“And there's Derek hiding in the shadow of the couch. Evening, Derek.”

Derek wasn't sure when he got to the point where he was comfortable grunting a response to Mr. Stilinski, but he had. Or at least he had in moments like this when he was boneless on the couch with Stiles' fingers scraping at the back of his neck as though he didn't want him to even consider moving. Which Derek definitely didn't, not even for a second.

He followed the rustling sound in the kitchen for a few seconds before tuning it out, letting his eyes fall closed as the lack of sleep started to catch up with him. He was dozing, on the very edges of his consciousness, when the punctuating screech of a ringtone forced his eyes open. His ears buzzed, latching onto the stream of sound to the point that he was listening to the conversation before he realized what was going on. 

He pushed himself to a sitting position. 

“Derek?” Stiles got up after him, his hand landing on Derek's arm when he reached for his jacket. “Derek, what's going on?”

Derek cast a look towards the kitchen, then met Stiles' eyes through the small space between them. Suddenly the living room was claustrophobic. “They found a fifth body.”

Stiles remained speechless, even as Derek pressed an apologetic kiss to his knuckles, grabbed his jacket, and left.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to dedicate this chapter to [srodriguez15](http://srodriguez15.tumblr.com/) on tumblr. Thanks for the encouragement. : )

The town was in an uproar over the murders. It was a silent sort of uproar, but Derek heard it like fire from a machine gun. Everything was subtly off, screaming on a frequency that only he could hear. No one knew what to do, and that simple fact altered everything worth altering. What was worse was that he didn't know how to go about fixing it. He was attuned to Beacon Hills, with the feel of it, in the way that any animal got to know its territory. So he knew when something was wrong, even if it was something as small as a subtle change in the air.

This was more than a change. It was some unwelcome tragedy brought down on his life again, too similar to the fire that had altered his entire world eight years ago. 

There was little he could do, considering the police had found the body and marked it off. The night it had been discovered he went to the crime scene—again deep in the woods—and observed from the trees. The officers keeping the scene secure didn't have much information to give in the muttering between them. Still no leads.

Even if Jackson hadn't been out of town, they'd had his Kanima side under control for a year now. The chances of regression were possible, but unlikely at this point. Besides, he was nearly six hours away with Danny and Lydia. It could only have been whatever this Mundus creature was.

His only useful strain of information was, perhaps, the worst part of it: this particular body seemed to have been attacked by an animal. 

Which meant, unfortunately, that Mundus knew that there were werewolves around.

Dean was snooping around again, not to Derek’s surprise. The police still thought he was a genuine FBI agent, and he suspected that Stiles only hadn’t mentioned it to his father to try to keep him safe. If he had an option, Derek would have done the same for Stiles from the beginning. Things only got more complicated the more normal, unsuspecting people were brought into it. How convoluted would the sheriff’s job become if he realized he was contending with werewolves and hunters on a regular basis? Up until now, they’d been lucky that things had a convenient wrap-up.

But none of this helped Derek any. Whatever information there was to be gathered, Dean and the Argents would have first access to it now, so long as the police thought Dean was a legitimate FBI agent. Stiles could, of course, swing some information their way, but it wasn’t much. Every second that passed without answers was more pressure on Derek, his instincts pulling him in two directions and stretching him thin.

He didn't need Allison's warning to know that the Argents were turning their suspicions to him. Once again he was on the run for something he'd had nothing to do with, forced to avoid his own house. He’d seen the lot of them sniffing around there, too. It had been a struggle to choke down the rage, the territorial surge to protect what was his. The Hale house had turned into a home again, carrying the memories and scents of his pack, and Derek didn’t want their paranoia and unjustified anger polluting it.

What was worse was that he couldn't go to Stiles' either, as Mr. Stilinski surely found something suspicious in how quickly he'd left three nights ago. The last time he’d been on the run, Stiles’ home had been a temporary reprieve. Living with the teen had been no easy task, that was certain, but at least he had a warm place to sleep. He had a place where he didn’t have to worry about protecting himself at every moment, even if it took some extensive persuading from Stiles for him to believe it.

Just three nights, but it felt like ages since he'd made sure that Stiles was safe and in one piece with his own two eyes and roaming hands. He didn’t know how much the Argents knew about their relationship, but he knew that Mr. Stilinski knew enough to make it dangerous. He was a good man, and kind, but Derek couldn’t hold it against him if he wanted to protect is son. It may have been nice if he understood that Derek was only trying to do the same.

He slid down the trunk of the tree and let his leg drop off the branch. The park was not, by any means, his preferred location even if he _was_ stuck on his own. But his eyes were burning—he hadn't slept more than a few hours in those three nights—leaving him with little choice in the matter. He needed to sleep, even for just a few hours, in spite of his best attempts to ignore it. He dug the heel of his hand into one tired eye to try alleviating the ache. Unsurprisingly, it didn't help.

\-------------------------------------------------------

Two hours after his phone finally died, which occurred on day four of being an innocent criminal for possibly the tenth time in his life, Derek couldn’t stand to be away from the Stilinski house anymore. He didn’t know how he was going to manage it, but he had to make sure that it wasn’t covered in caution tape or something to arouse equivalent alarm. Whatever this demon was, it seemed to have the sense to try to pin something on him. At least, assuming that it really _wasn’t_ an animal attack that had turned up the fifth body. And when was it _ever_ as simple as a genuine animal attack in Beacon Hills?

It took him another two hours to find some careful, stealthy way to spy on the Stilinski home without being caught. Then it took the rest of the day for night to fall so that plan could come even close to working. He and Stiles hadn’t been texting religiously—which seemed a bit strange, seeing as Stiles was quite good at worrying obsessively—but it didn’t matter. It would be just like Stiles to text him five minutes after his phone died and then go into panic mode because Derek wasn’t replying. Maybe, if everything worked out, he’d be able to get into Stiles’ room for all of two seconds.

The second the red SUV rolled into the driveway, Derek knew everything wasn’t going to work out.

\-------------------------------------------------------

Victoria Argent slid out first, bearing something that looked like a cake. Derek, not unfamiliar with her brand of insanity, couldn’t shake the feeling that a machete was hidden in it—all practicality aside. It wasn’t just the Argents who had come either, but Dean Winchester and his friend, who Derek had not yet met but didn’t like out of principle. From his perch across the street, he could hear Mrs. Argent spin some grand lie about how the ‘agent’ was a friend of theirs when Mr. Stilinski answered the door. Derek seethed when the sheriff _thanked_ her for getting the FBI to help, rather wishing that it wasn’t a werewolf-only trait to be able to detect such mis-truths. 

He could see through the front windows of the house, the figures illuminated as they moved across the span of pale gold light leaking from the living room. There was no telling what the Argents were doing there, but he could pick up Stiles’ heartbeat as though it were his own. He was surprisingly calm, and Derek wondered how long he’d known that the Argents would be coming over for dinner. Not soon enough to mention it before Derek’s phone died.

It made sense to leave. He should go and come back when the threat was gone, but Derek couldn’t move from his spot. Even if they weren’t about to torture the Stilinskis, there was too much at risk for him to just leave. His driving force pressed against his chest, urging him to get closer. Hell, his wolf was snarling at him to _get in there_ and _protect_ , but he didn’t. He couldn’t. At this point, his presence would only cause more trouble. It would put everyone at risk.

But that didn’t make it easier to resist.

He remained fixed on Stiles’ heartbeat, following conversations through the way that it influenced the steady pulse. He didn’t want to let it go, as if he might reach for it later and find it not there. Dean had already seen Stiles at his house, had to have fathomed some thread of the connection between them, and Derek didn’t know his end game. How much like Kate was he? Or was he worse?

As hard as he tried, it was impossible to chase the thought away through the entire hour-and-a-half dinner they held. Derek was watching a horror movie and just waiting for the shrill violin to tell him when his worst nightmares came on screen. But, unlike a horror movie, which was conceived with the notion of owing him such a terror, nothing happened here. For once, blessedly, his life didn’t operate to make things more painful than they had to be. The Argents left on promises of doing this again sometime—Derek would make sure that never happened—and drove away.

In the overwhelming urge to check on Stiles, he didn’t pick up on the trace scents that weren’t disappearing. He was hanging just outside Stiles’ window when he heard voices, and he picked up the smell of leather and metal.

“Even if I knew, you aren’t stupid enough to think I’d tell you,” Stiles was saying. “But thanks to you, he won’t call me or come anywhere near here.”

“Trust me, it’s for the best,” Dean replied. Derek clenched his jaw.

Stiles huffed out one of his nervous, annoyed laughs. “Yeah, maybe if you actually _knew_ Derek, I’d give you the time of day on that one. But you don’t, so I’m going to have to keep you in the ‘Definitely-Do-Not-Trust’ category. Feel free to re-apply after you get a clue.”

“I may not know Derek, but I know monsters—”

“And yet you’re wasting your time here when you could be doing something useful, like tracking down the thing that’s actually _killing people_ instead of—instead of Derek.”

Dean sighed. “And how do you know it’s not him, huh? What makes you so sure your little wolf-pal hasn’t gone feral?”

“He’s been controlling it just fine since he was fifteen. I don’t think he’s going to start ripping out insides _now_.”

Derek blinked, the information striking him as off somehow. It wasn’t wrong—he’d manifested late compared to his sister and most of his cousins—but it sounded strange to his own ears. It was like new information, somehow.

“There’s a first time for everything.”

“Not this.” Stiles’ voice was low and alarmingly set; it was dangerous, almost. “Are you done now? I have college applications to fill out and a werewolf to worry over.”

Silence stretched on for a few minutes before he heard feet—to heavy to be Stiles’—moving across the floor. “C’mon, Cas.”

Derek waited until he heard the front door open to propel himself onto the open window sill. It was too small for him, but he kept his balance, waiting to put his weight on the floor until everything fell silent downstairs. 

Stiles was on his computer, and Derek suspected he’d been at his desk for the whole of the conversation with Dean. Where he normally would have relished in scaring Stiles by sneaking behind him, he didn’t. His fingers twitched at his sides, impatient, trying to think of some subtle way to do this that wouldn’t alert Mr. Stilinski to his presence.

“Stiles,” he said it as quietly as possible.

Of course, Stiles didn’t really handle subtly all that well.

“Holy god!” He didn’t really shout, but he was loud enough that Derek immediately snarled and held a finger in front of his own lips. He strode across the room to the door and shut it as quietly as possible; then he pressed his ear to it to listen. For a long minute, things were quiet downstairs, but then the sound of Mr. Stilinski loading the dishwasher returned. 

He turned around to an unexpected tackle that found Stiles’ face pressed hard into his chest and arms around his waist. Derek pulled in his scent, wrapped it around some deeper part of him. He hadn’t forgotten in the chaos what this felt like, but he’d smothered some part of him that craved it—needed it. There was still the lingering reality between them, something crucial hanging just outside the chaos that had erupted around them. Derek’s skin felt too tight; his mind felt too busy. The pressure of everything and the fleeting, dark consideration that one or both of them could die before he—

Then Stiles was pulling back and Derek’s wolf was bleeding to drag him in closer again. The weight of Stiles’ arms settled around his waist just wasn’t enough. “Are you insane? Do you not smell crazy hunters all over this house?”

“My phone battery died,” Derek explained. “I had to make sure nothing happened.”

“You mean aside from the Hootenanny-From-Hell?”

Derek set his hands on Stiles’ shoulders, pushing him back enough that he could look him in the eyes properly. “What did the Argents want?”

Stiles shook his head. “I don’t know. I think they were fishing for information, but I don’t know what. Dad hasn’t really mentioned anything to me about the fifth body.”

“Did he tell them anything?”

“No, not really. Just that they found something, but he didn’t say what.” Stiles hands moved up to Derek’s chest. “Did you find anything? Scott’s basically fallen off the face of the planet now that he can’t get anywhere near Allison. No one’s talking to anyone because it’s not safe.”

“Not yet,” Derek confessed. “But if there’s something to find, I’ll find it.”

“Are you seriously going to pull this whole lone-wolf deal again? That _never_ works, Derek—!”

“I haven’t got a choice, Stiles.” He was well past the end of his rope. Stiles gaped, affronted, but Derek took the opportunity found in his silence. “The Argents assume it’s me, and they know the people I’m close to in this town. It’s better if I just do this alone.”

He knew Stiles well enough to know that the look on his face was a heavy resignation, and it was one that he wasn’t about to confess to. Instead he just crossed his arms over his stomach and looked away, trying to pretend he was less bothered by all of this than he was. In some senses, Derek appreciated it. But, in the back of his mind, he was still caught in that moment against the door, of Stiles’ holding onto him and grounding him to the spot. He was trapped in that moment, so aware of how much he _mattered_ , and he wanted to tell Stiles that he mattered too—more than Derek had let on.

But none of that was important, not now. What was important was keeping all of them safe because no one else could. He was used to these kinds of sacrifices; or, at least, it was what he told himself to make turning back for the window easier. Inevitably the Argents—or Dean and his partner—would be back to keep an eye out for him. It was better to leave now, before they decided it was safe to return.

Crouching in the window, he watched Stiles move back over to his computer again. His movements reeked of anger, the way his heart bounced in his ribs betrayed something more like concern. When he did sit down again, his typing was hard and furious, some random document open on the screen.

Derek frowned, dropping his eyes to the floor. “When did I tell you that I manifested at fifteen?”

For a second, he thought Stiles was angry enough at him that he wasn’t going to reply. Then, even when he did, it wasn’t much of an improvement.

“You want an exact date? Because I haven’t got one.”

Derek’s fingers curled into the window sill, and he lingered, just for a second. After taking another deep drag through his nose—picking up Stiles’ scent for another sequence of long days on his own—Derek jumped out the window.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thanks to my beta readers, affectedline and fromparriswithlove, for getting back to me as promptly as your schedules allowed. 
> 
> Due to my overwhelming paranoia, I'm uploading three chapters today (that almost never happens) just so I can sleep easy knowing no one will steal my ideas. Because I'm immensely paranoid like that.
> 
> Thank you guys for reading, leaving kudos, comments, and bookmarking this fic. I really love hearing from you guys, no matter what you have to say (well, unless it's to tell me you don't like the pairings. THEN Y R U HERE?)! I hope you enjoy! : )

Another day passed with no new information. He managed to sneak back into his own house to get his phone charger and wallet, but that was about it. He had to sit in a cafe in broad daylight while it charged—nearly got caught by the cops as they passed by the huge window—but it had collected enough battery that he could check his texts and voicemail. There were more messages from Scott than anyone else. The teenager didn’t seem all that thrilled to find that the Argents were snooping around his house, too. At least the police didn’t suspect Scott; a clean police record did wonders.

He looped back to the woods again, finding a tree with enough leaves to comfortably hide him for the night. He was exhausted to his bones, but sleeping never came easy when he couldn’t protect himself. Sometimes he wished he’d just stayed away from Beacon Hills two years ago. But then things happened, memories surfaced, that made him realize he was, on some scale, glad that he hadn’t.

He closed his eyes, but he wasn’t dreaming. Dreaming would have required him to be asleep. Instead, he was suspended in that place between resting and alert, the one that sometimes caused people—not him, no matter what anyone said—to jerk themselves awake when their mind convinced them they were falling. It was the closest he could get to sleep for now, so, no, he wasn’t dreaming. He was remembering, but in that suspended place the details were blurred along the edges.

It was only a month and a half ago, but he had it pinned down in his mind like a favorite picture to a corkboard. He’d spent the entire day pacing his room—his kitchen—the _entire house_ while he tried to work out what he was doing to do. He should have been with the rest of his pack, celebrating the miraculous fact that all of them had graduated. They’d lived through high school and had done so on more than one playing field. 

But he wasn’t with them. He couldn’t be. Not yet, anyway.

His senses were muddled together, and the two halves of him that had been whole for so long were conflicted. It had been years since he hadn’t agreed with his wolf, with the part of him that was wise in its instincts but craved like a child, and he’d almost forgotten what it felt like. He could have gone the rest of his life not recalling the feeling of being pulled in two opposing directions. It was arguing with himself, both parts were logical and both parts knew, in the end, what he wanted. But his human side knew sense and reason, and he hated himself for it sometimes.

In the end he got there—late—when Stiles was helping Scott and Melissa McCall clean up paper plates and plastic cups. The others had gone, but it suited Derek just fine. He just needed to talk to Stiles, before the discussions of college and leaving Beacon Hills were all that he heard about. He needed to do it before acceptance letters started rolling in, and before they were all sitting around discussing programs and degrees and future plans. Or maybe he just needed to talk to him before he exploded at the seams—that was a feeling Derek was rather unfamiliar with.

He didn’t get a word out before Stiles was talking over him, so glad to be done with high school that he wasn’t bothered at all that Derek hadn’t shown up all day. Then he was bulldozing into another conversation entirely, and Derek couldn’t—

The sharp crack of a gun pulled him to full alert in an instant, the flare of awareness shooting through his body as the bullet nicked his arm.

Derek snarled as he dropped out of the tree, hitting the forest floor in a crouch. He was expecting an Argent, but the scent wasn't the same. 

“Winchester.”

“Oh good, I made an impression.”

Dean stepped out of the shadows, gun cocked and aimed, his face no less intense even in the meager light of the half-moon. Derek's vision went red, lighting up the natural arena around them like a televised cage match. He could see every detail—and those he couldn't see, he could sense. Dean's heartbeat was steady and cold. The purported angel that he had in tow was close, but not an immediate threat. 

“You’ve been threatening my pack.” Derek flexed his fingers, felt the joints pop and his muscles coil. 

“Funny how you consider a _fair warning_ to be a threat. Sure you’re not just a little paranoid?”

Derek snarled, baring his fangs. “You come here and you threaten my pack and my territory. That’s not paranoia.”

“Then what is it?” Dean’s eyes narrowed in the dark.

“Justifiable homicide.”

Derek lunged before the bullet went off, his claw connected with Dean’s leg. It wasn’t an attempt on his life, and it served its purpose in taking Dean off his feet. He fired a shot—wide—as Derek darted forward. He leaped, feet connecting with the solid trunk, and propelled himself to the next one. With each touch between the two he got higher, until he was safely in the boughs.

“So, you’re gonna try to kill me? Let me tell you, I’ve had bigger, scarier, _meaner_ things try.”

The timbre of Derek’s roar echoed through the forest, and Dean’s aim swung around the clearing they were in. Derek waited, crouched low, until Dean’s back came towards him. When he jumped, his feet connected with less than half of his weight, crushing the air out of Dean’s lungs.

“It’s not smart to threaten what’s mine,” Derek snarled.

Dean’s words were a gasp, but audible enough. “Yeah, well, I didn’t make it this far by being smart.”

The sharp contact of Dean’s elbow with his skull wasn’t enough to knock Derek off, but it was enough to distract him. He barely dodged the uncoordinated, backwards shot that Dean fired—reckless, to say the least. It shattered his collarbone on its path through to the other side. Derek howled and rolled off, getting back to his feet.

Only six feet away, Dean did the same, but with his gun aimed again. Derek growled.

“I put up with the Argents because they put up with me. But I don’t have any sort of arrangement with you. You’re a _threat_.”

“Yeah, and I bet having me turn up dead wouldn’t be incriminating at all, would it?”

Derek’s teeth ground together; the logic was infallible. If Dean turned up dead, particularly with the Argents _knowing_ the likeliness of this confrontation happening, it would be impossible to refute. And the self-defense argument rarely worked in the case of werewolves.

Derek curled his claws into his palms, allowing the slight pain to sober him. “It wasn't me.”

“Why don't I believe you?”

He snapped his jaw, fangs still bared. “Because it's easier to kill than consider the alternative.”

“I'm not seeing any alternatives,” Dean barked. His heartbeat jumped, but it was anger, not fear. “That body wasn't like the others, Derek. What happened? I riled you and you got sloppy?”

“ _It wasn't me!_ ”

The gun went off, but Derek could practically hear the adrenaline coursing through Dean's body before he pulled the trigger. He dodged before the sound hit the air, lunging forward and taking the hunter off his feet again.

Dean had already shown that wasn't the sort of hunter who hid behind his weapon, but that didn’t stop Derek from being caught off guard when his arm swung out. An elbow collided hard with Derek's temple for the second time, sending a wave of dizzying pain through his skull, but not enough to deter him. As much as he wasn't looking for a fight tonight, he had no plans to lay down and take a bullet to the skull. 

They rolled across the leaves, a mix of grunts and snarls and gnashing teeth. Dean’s weight nearly pinned him down, sending his mind into a frenzy: _Don’t get trapped._ He got his feet under Dean and flung him off. The smack of his weight colliding with a tree was satisfying but not enough. Dean was still conscious, but Derek dove for the gun instead, kicking it hard and listening for the sound of it skittering across the ground. Only then did he go back to Dean, fisting his fingers in his jacket and slamming him back against the tree he'd just hit.

“It would make my life a hell of a lot easier if I just killed you right here.” He thought of the Argents chomping at the bit for a reason to kill him; he thought of Stiles, and all the subtle reminders they'd exchanged. Reminders that Derek was better than his pride, than his urges and feral instincts.

“But you won’t.” 

It took his mind a fraction of a second to recognize that the grating, unfamiliar voice was coming from behind him. Derek had only a split-second warning to move; he didn't manage to dodge the blow completely. The knife jammed between two ribs from behind before he got out of the way. He yelped—more wolf than man—when he reached back and ripped it free again. Silver.

The man in the trench-coat—Castiel—was helping Dean up when Derek's clouded vision found them again.

“I suggest you go,” Castiel said, nodding towards the empty stretch of woods over Derek's shoulder.

“Cas!” And now it was Dean who was snarling.

“ _Now._ ”

Derek wanted to finish this. His wolf barked at him to stand his ground, to defend his territory and himself by extension. 

He thought of Stiles; he thought of the warm blood pooling over his hand as he tried and failed to apply pressure to his wound.

He gnashed his teeth as he turned.

“They found a hair on that body, Derek!” Dean shouted after him. “When we find out it's yours, you can bet this won't end so pretty next time!”

For all his knowledge that he'd done nothing, that he'd killed no one, Derek's blood still ran cold.

\-------------------------------------------------------

Derek was more or less healed by the time Scott and Allison come bursting into his house. Stiles was holding a cold wet cloth to the injury on his collarbone, but it was for his benefit rather than Derek's. When they showed up Derek made him get rid of it anyway and pulled on a clean shirt. Silver didn't have the same effects as wolfsbane, but it still caused a lot more problems than any other metal.

“Dean's right about the body,” Allison confessed, picking at the sleeve of her shirt. “They said they thought Mundus could be behind the killings, but the latest body doesn't add up. Apparently that rotten egg smell we found on the first body was sulfur—that smell wasn't at the fifth crime scene.”

“Maybe it was a mountain lion,” Stiles offered lamely. No one made a sound at the joke, and even Allison barely managed a reassuring smile.

“Or maybe the demon's just trying to pin it on me,” Derek said, dropping himself into the chair next to Stiles'. 

Stiles' eyes were burning worried holes into the side of Derek's head. Out of the edge of his eye he could make out where Stiles' fingers where nervously fidgeting at the handle of his coffee mug. “Did he say anything else?”

Derek shrugged. “Something about a hair.”

“A hair?” Scott asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Stiles' shoulders sank. “My dad mentioned that the forensic team found some hair at the scene. They sent it to the next city over to be analyzed.”

Derek’s patience was too thin not to turn on Stiles. “And you didn’t feel the need to mention that the other night?” 

The look that flashed across Stiles’ face was a mix of surprise and hurt. It quickly sobered to angry. “Hey, I didn’t know, alright? I had to do some very shady things to get that information out of him. And in case you’re wondering, I’m pretty much guaranteed the worst son of the year award.”

A sharp need to amend, to fix, cut through him, but, as sorry as he was, Derek couldn’t think about apologizing now. The ice was back in his blood, and it was making it hard to think clearly. “Have they found anything?”

Stiles shook his head, looking away. “Not that I know about. Dad said it can take a few days for that kind of thing.”

“Well, you didn't do it, right?” Scott's attention turned to Derek, his over-eagerness betraying the simplicity of his thought processes. “So, they'll get the results, and they'll know it wasn't you.”

“Good ol' Occam's Razor,” Stiles added.

Scott frowned. “What?”

“Seriously, dude, how? _How_ did you graduate high school?”

“I—”

“Enough!” Derek shouted. He hadn't meant yell, not really, but the entire concept of having an argument over Scott's inability to remember textbook information seemed—impossible. How was he sitting here with half of his pack, arguing about something so benign, when he could be dead tomorrow? And why the hell did this demon have it out for him, anyway?

“Scott? Maybe we should—” Allison's chair scraped backwards across the kitchen tile.

“Uh, yeah. Right behind you.”

Derek found himself rinsing out coffee mugs five minutes later when Stiles came back from walking them out. He spent another five minutes leaving two wet hand prints on Stiles' hoodie as he just held him and tried to breathe—to think. The was the first time in days that he had everything he needed to calm the deep ache in his chest...and it wasn't working. He still felt wired.

They lay on the couch together, entwined in the stillness of the empty house. Stiles’ breathing slowed, under a steady rise and fall started under Derek’s hand. He let Stiles sleep, his own mind drifting off somewhere else until Stiles pried himself free and wiped the drool from the edge of his mouth. 

“I have to get home. I told Dad I was hanging out with Scott and Allison. He'll...start to freak if I don't get back.”

Something told Derek he wasn't quite so welcome in the Stilinski household. He wondered for a second, entertaining the idea that, if he'd stayed, maybe he wouldn't have cast so much suspicion on himself. It wasn't like the sheriff knew what he was. 

But the thought was gone almost as quickly as it came. The police and the hunters both thought he was capable of ripping his sister in half just a few years ago, after all.

He walked Stiles to the front door.

“Are you going to stay here tonight?” Stiles asked, pulling anxiously on the strings of his hoodie as he tried to make them even. 

Derek nodded. “I'll leave early in the morning.”

Stiles didn't look at him when he nodded, fixated on the tattered strings. They shared a kiss, but Derek's world didn't illuminate in warmth and chaotic color the way it usually did. It was apparent that Stiles was uncomfortable with the idea of him being anywhere so easily located, but Derek was too tired to try and fix it. As he closed the door, all he could think was that maybe Stiles was right to worry.

\-------------------------------------------------------

At 3:47am, Derek was startled to consciousness by a text from Stiles containing only three words, blurred by his fatigue:

_Get out. Now._

Downstairs, someone kicked his door in.


	6. Chapter 6

The branch gave a threatening dip under his foot, barely holding his weight as he shoved off of it. The sound seemed thunderous in his ears, and his adrenaline was going too hard to decide if it would be quiet enough that a human would miss it. He didn't risk it, and when he hit the ground he was still running hard. Every muscle in his body was coiled for this, pushing all of his strength into the flight response. He felt like he'd been running for days.

First the police had showed up at his door, and outrunning them was easy, but it still required _running_. He didn't have a minute to stop and think. Even now he wasn't sure what made him think that running to the Argents would have been a good idea, but that was where his instincts led him. Chris Argent didn't like him, and his wife liked him even less, but they were the only people in this city who stood a chance of letting him talk first. He remembered their code, even if so many other people hadn't.

But that plan, however outlandish, was shot down by the second pair of hunters that felt the need to storm his town uninvited. Not that the Argents were better, but at least Derek could lay claim to having _history_ with them. Dean just had enough of a personal vendetta that Derek was starting to wonder if they weren't enemies in a past life, and he just couldn't remember it.

His body didn't know the suburbs so well, but the two failed in their attempt to cut him off before the woods. There he was in his element, and they'd fallen well behind.

He jumped, latching onto another low-hanging tree branch, and swung himself up. Bark broke under his claws as they sank into the pliant wood, still moist from days-old rain. The tree wouldn't hide him for long, but it was enough to let out a long, clear howl into the night air. Then he was off again, his body moving in liquid memory because, _face it_ , he'd been running his entire life by now.

That was when the first flare arrow went off.

He barely had time to duck and shield his eyes before the burst of white was blasting into his vision. Even as he threw an arm over his face to shield it, he moved. He didn't have a choice.

“Stop running, Derek!” Chris Argent. The voice slotted into a place in his mind that earned a roar upon hearing it. His system flooded with adrenaline and panic, were he to admit it.

Another shot cracked against the tree next to him, and he slid awkwardly along the forest floor to dodge it. His heartbeat was loud, but he listened past past it—through it. He attuned to the sound of the offensive, his instincts closing in tight around what threatened him. What threatened him threatened his territory, his pack, his—

Two shots this time, from different directions. He skidded to a stop at the last minute, letting them both whiz by, just inches from his arms. The arrows weren't flash heads, but the trees they made contact with burst with crackling electricity, nearly a visible blue where it torched the bark. The sound buzzed in his ears like static, carrying an imaginary current through every molecule of his skin. His body was a superconductor waiting to happen, but unlike the trees, he’d feel it—all _nine hundred thousand volts_ of it

He ran, hard, and on nothing but the need to survive coursing through him. If he let his exhaustion, his thirst, his hunger—if he let his humanity, the thing they so fervently denied—catch up with him, then it was over. _He_ was over. And wasn't that ironic?

The head of an arrow bit into his shoulder as he leaped over the ravine marking one edge of his territory. For a second he dreaded the electrical shock, but none came. Just the sharp pain of being hit, which was enough to forcibly buckle his arm when he landed, the weight jarring the new wound. Still, he pushed on without a destination in mind.

He couldn't lead them back to Stiles', and that was assuming that they weren't already guarding the house. Scott's would certainly be protected, and the rest of them—Jackson, Lydia, and Danny—were still out of town. So, he had to run to lose them. What followed that wasn't something he could see—his vision started and ended with the throb of red splashed across it. Only the _now_ existed.

And, unsurprisingly, he didn't even have that.

The bullet hit him in the calf, sending him sliding across the dirt on his injured shoulder. An undignified yelp of surprise breached his throat, and he scrambled to get himself upright again. No more than ten yards behind him he could hear Argent's band of hunters clambering through the water and up the hilled shore of the ravine. What he'd forgotten was the other two.

Blood leaked from the new hole in his leg—silver again—as he scrambled backwards until his back hit a tree. He broke the arrow off with no slight struggle and tossed the shaft aside. He could smell both of them before they stepped out of their shadowed hiding places. 

“I told you this was the only way it could end, Derek,” Dean said. Dean's heart was pounding in his chest—in Derek's head—from the run. His companion's was as still as if he hadn't moved an inch.

Derek snarled, face transformed and eyes red, but didn't move. 

Dean's gun cocked with such ease that it punctuated something in Derek's mind. This random, coherent realization that he was very, very alone. Scott had broken the borders of his territory some minutes ago, but Derek didn't dare howl again to let him know his location. Even if he had, he wouldn't be here fast enough. 

As his mind slowed down, giving him all the time in the world, he realized he'd spent two years doing nothing. Everything he had done amounted to this—to being alone on the business end of a bunch of hunters’ weapons. Protecting this territory for years now, and they still didn’t think him any different than a felon—an animal, incapable of using its higher brain function.

His leg throbbed around the silver, the muscles attempting to heal it and failing miserably. Air burned in his lungs; his chest heaved with a mixture of indiscriminate pains. He dropped his head back against the tree but didn't dare to take his eyes away from Dean. If this was how it ended then he wasn't going to let it pass with his eyes closed.

The last thing he expected was for a panting Chris Argent to put his hand on Dean's and force his gun down. Granted, the crossbow aimed at him instead was anticipated and hardly an improvement.

“What the hell are you doing?” Dean growled, perhaps trying to keep it between him and Chris but failing. Derek could hear a bird rustle in its nest from fifty yards away.

“No offense, Dean, but you don't know Derek,” Chris replied, his voice equal measures of calm and cold. His eyes, which turned towards Derek, betrayed the same stoic characteristics. “If he did this, I'd be the first to take him out.”

“You've gotta be kidding me. You still don't think it was him?”

“I think, if we're dealing with a demon, then we have to consider the possibilities.”

“I told you—Sammy said demons can't possess werewolves. Something about the wolf itself being too strong and too much survival instinct. I don't know. Geek talk isn't really my forte,” Dean explained, frustrated. “Why are you defending him, anyway?”

Chris hesitated, and Derek himself was curious after the answer. But it didn't come. Chris hadn't taken his eyes off of him since arriving, and Derek remembered how sensitive the trigger was.

So, he downshifted. The pain multiplied, flooded his senses and made him arch against the tree, but he did it anyway. Even when he could speak his jaw was set, fingers flexing in the dirt at his sides. “Nous chassons ceux qui nous chassent.”

“Was that a spell?” Dean asked. “Did the werewolf just cast a spell? Because I'm definitely just itching to say 'I told you so' right now.” 

“No, Dean,” Chris said. “It was French.”

“Spells could be in French.”

“It means—” Derek lost the words, moving his hand to his leg and gripping tight.

“‘We hunt those who hunt us,’” Chris finished. 

Derek nodded, once. “I didn't kill anyone.”

“The evidence says otherwise,” Chris argued. Naturally, coming to Derek's defense did not mean _actually_ defending him.

“I don't know why my hair was there, but it wasn't me. Why would I start killing people at random after two years?”

Dean spoke up. “So you could bring that fact up during an argument that we really shouldn't be having with a werewolf—c'mon, man, he's a _werewolf_!”

“Dean.” That time it was Castiel, hovering on the peripheral of the scene and looking intently at Derek. He had the sense that the guy hadn't blinked since he’d gotten to Beacon Hills. “Remember what I told you.”

“It was a load of crap, Cas.”

“I know...what I know,” Castiel commented, as if he wasn't sure that was right.

“He's a werewolf; that's reason enough to put him down!”

The words hit his senses like a match to a pool of gasoline and Derek _roared_ , his eyes searing red in the dark. An arrow shot past his head, as he rolled and pushed himself up to his feet again. That was when all hell broke loose. He laid out three of the four hunters Argent had brought with him before stalking after Dean. The pain in his leg, his shoulder, his head, his chest—it evaporated. Nothing mattered but ending this. He'd been stupid for thinking that a hunter, even one with a code, would give him the benefit of the doubt.

He wrestled Dean to the ground with a snarl, knocking the gun away and planting himself on Dean's chest. His fingers clamped around his throat, tight but not suffocating. Not yet.

“You don't want to do this.” Castiel's voice was so matter of fact that Derek was beginning to think he could read minds. He snarled, twisted his head towards him to argue—to agree—he didn't know—

But then he heard the setting of an arrow behind him and froze. He could smell the trail of blood leaking from Chris' temple behind him, the steady beat of his heart. Unafraid. Cold.

“It's over, Derek.”

\-------------------------------------------------------

The smell hit him before anything else.

Over the scents of forest, of Chris Argent's blood, of Dean's leather jacket, and the strange mix of scents coming from Castiel, it hit him. It was like finding the last hidden object in an I-Spy picture book, except familiar. And out of place. It didn't belong here; it didn't belong _now_. An agony spread through his mind, down his spine, and rooted its way into his chest, pumping him with new sensations. Defend. Shelter. Protect.

And then the world started moving again, and he was sucked into the invisible rip current it brought along.

He was suddenly alone in the small clearing, baffled and overpowered by that _scent_. The one that he could place and couldn't. It was like a flare head had gone off in his eyes, but he'd willingly stared right into it. 

Then he realized.

He wasn't alone.

“...Stiles?”

He could only see the back of the lacrosse track suit, but it was enough. The smell, how many times he tucked himself against the back of Stiles' neck—oh, he knew, and there was nothing to distract him from the realization. The entire forest seemed dead around them, silent and unmoving, save for the rhythmic beating in his ears. Was it his heartbeat or Stiles'? What was Stiles _doing_ here? And how hadn't he _sensed_ it?

Then the groaning started, and he heard Dean murmur “son of a bitch” somewhere over his head. Derek found him—found all of the hunters—pinned against the surrounding trees. Not hanging from them but pinned by invisible hands. His eyes dragged back to Stiles again, and the full picture came into view. The fact that Stiles' hand was raised, his fingers splayed out wide—like he was—

“Stiles?”

Stiles twisted around and smiled. But it wasn't his smile, his warmth— _him_. 

“Not quite.”

Stiles blinked, and when his eyes opened again they were swallowed in black. It eclipsed the brown—eclipsed everything—and transformed Stiles' entire face. Derek's insides turned to ice at the same time his temper flared, and the creature imitating Stiles seemed to realize it. The next thing he knew, he was another amongst the collection forced to the trees. 

It took its time walking to him, and even its walk was different. How long had it been impersonating Stiles? And where was the real one, that it could get its scent so accurate as to fool him? He’d never mistaken a scent before in his life, and his insides twisted to think what must have happened to the real Stiles to make this so authentic—so impossibly _perfect_.

“Where's Stiles?”

“Right in front of you,” not-Stiles replied, the edges of its lips pulling into a smirk. “Don't tell me you don't recognize it?”

“The _real_ one.” Then it laughed, and Derek didn't bother stopping the guttural sound that ripped through him. “ _Where is he!_ ”

“I don't settle for _imitations_ ,” it stated. It was close now, leaning well into Derek's space, but he couldn't move under the weight of the invisible truck that had tipped on top of him. “This meatsuit is one-hundred percent Stiles Stilinski.”

“No.” And Derek was pretty sure his brain was only half way to completing the thought when he said it. There was cotton replacing the liquid in his veins, and his chest constricted with something new and tremulous. He felt like he was thrashing around in the throes of a nightmare, except not a single part of him was moving. 

The smirk widened in front of him, like the singular expression had become his entire world. “There it is. Are you starting to get it?”

Derek wasn't even close to fathoming a response when another voice croaked from across the clearing. “Let the kid go.” 

Stiles—no, Stiles’ _body_ —spun on Dean. Derek finally dropped his eyes to the ground, only half conscious to how wide they were. His body was numb, overdosed and exhausted, but also distant. Or maybe his mind was the distant one.

“I'd love to, really, but I have some unfinished business with Derek.”

“What?” He wasn't sure who said it, him or Dean, but it might have been both of them.

“What the hell did you do to piss off a _demon_?” Dean grunted.

Derek scrambled backwards through his memory, but not for fear of his own life. Stiles. _Stiles._ “I didn't—I've never even met Mundus before.”

Another laugh, this one longer, but sharper somehow. Derek growled, incapable of anything more. Of _anything_.

When it turned around again, Stiles' eyes were back, but they weren't his. The differences that should have been obvious all along were now blinding in their inaccuracies. 

“Oh, Derek, I'm hurt. Don't you recognize me?” It spread Stiles' arms, gesturing to itself as if that single action held all the answers.

“I told you: I've never met—”

He groaned as the pressure increased on his chest, leaving him gasping for air. The demon moved closer, and the hand that found his chest was a contradiction across his nerves. It slid up to his jaw, fingers gliding down the line of bone to his chin. Derek tilted his head down, looked into the face of something that was not quite the person he knew, the one he—

Warm words scalded his ear, close enough to feel the brush of lips on his skin. “Think about it, sweetie.”

Derek's entire body went limp, his organs sliding towards his feet in a puddle of cold mush. Inside he was screaming _no_ , punctuated by the growls and snarls and helpless howls of his wolf. Outside, he barely managed to let the name slide from him on a breath.

“Kate.”

When it pulled back again, the eyes were black and the smile was familiar in all the ways that made Derek _burn_ inside.

“Miss me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now it seems appropriate to let you guys in on my motivation for this entire fic series, just in case you were interested in where all of this came from.
> 
>  
> 
> [Derek's Face](http://thealphapack.tumblr.com/post/24952586551)  
> [This lovely gifset](http://trollian-dungeon.tumblr.com/post/23943455078)  
> [And also this one](http://derekstilinski.tumblr.com/post/22673060913/sugarfreepopcorn-teen-wolf-au-i-dont-even)  
> [And this one](http://strange-era.tumblr.com/post/26312593898/throw-your-stupid-fear-to-the-wind-shed-a-little)  
> [And this one](http://strange-era.tumblr.com/post/26391990212)
> 
>  
> 
> You don't have to look at them--they aren't necessarily relevant to the plot--but just in case you guys were wondering! The updates will be slower from here on out, but I'll try not to take too long with them. Thanks again for reading!


	7. Chapter 7

There was a pressure in Derek’s chest that wasn’t entirely the fault of whatever Kate was doing. This pressured expanded outward from the inside, pressed hard against his ribs and made him feel like his lungs were too small for his body. He’d never had a panic attack before—at least none that he could remember—but in the times that he had seen Stiles experience them, he was sure that’s what this was. His mind was closing in around him, focusing on the singular point:

Stiles was possessed by the woman who’d used him to kill his family.

He supposed, in some part of him suppressed in the very back of his mind, that if there was ever time to have a panic attack, it would be now.

“I’ll rip your head off,” he snarled, managing to thrash a few inches against the invisible hold.

Kate tsked at him. Through Stiles’ lips, through his tongue, she ‘tsked’ at him like he was a _child_.

“Didn’t anyone explain it to you?” She held out her hands, palms up, as though this entire thing was a joke. She turned on her heel, looked around at the surrounding hunters. “No one? Dean?”

“Explain what?”

Silence answered him, aside from the profile Kate offered him. Stiles’ face was pulled into a smile that should have been physically impossible. It was so _Kate_ that Derek thought, for a second, he could see her in those black eyes.

“ _What!_ ” He roared, suddenly aware that this cosmic prank Kate was playing on him involved Stiles’ life. Whatever she was playing at, she was making sure she couldn’t lose. Just like eight years ago.

But before she answered there was the nearly impossible to hear whistle through the air. Derek didn’t make the connection to what it was until he saw the long shaft of an arrow sticking from Kate— _Stiles_ —the cry let out was so distinctly Stiles that Derek wanted to rip to shreds whoever had done it. But the snarl that followed was a cold wash of reality.

“Don’t hurt him!” Dean shouted, but Derek was focused elsewhere.

Kate was already stalking in his direction, holding him still as her hand pressed to his chest. He expected the weight to increase, but it didn’t. It was just the same scorching touch that it had been before. The one that frazzled his senses and made him angry while pulling him to calm. His two halves fighting again.

“We’ll have to pick this up another time,” she murmured, her hand slipping into his back pocket. He bared his teeth when she squeezed, but her only reply was to lick lips that weren’t hers. “I suggest you follow me when you’ve lost some of the baggage. I’d hate to have to hurt my favorite outfit.”

Then she ripped the arrow out and ran just as Scott and Allison came bounding into the clearing. Kate’s hold on them didn’t drop until her scent was a faint trail. It was followable, but for as much effort as he put into it, to just staying on his feet, Derek’s legs gave out the second they hit the forest floor.

\-------------------------------------------------------

His house was the closest, so that’s where they retreated to. It had only taken Allison screaming for Scott to bring him back from his pursuit of Stiles. She’d gladly done that after Dean explained the finer points of demon possessions.

Hurting Kate meant hurting Stiles. 

Killing Stiles did not mean killing Kate.

Derek was still numb with the facts.

He’d been ripped in half inside, and he couldn’t figure out what to do with the two pieces that remained. One part of him screamed to kill Kate, pulled on every instinct he knew to kill her and protect what was his. The rest of him couldn’t. It wasn’t the same as killing Peter—Stiles was something different. Something more. He was someone Derek had spent the whole of his life looking for—needing—and now—

“I still don’t get it,” Dean said. The words that should have been sobering were inconsequential static in his ears. “What would Mundus want with you? What did he say?”

“It wasn’t Mundus,” Derek replied. “It was Kate.”

Chris Argent was on him faster than Derek could react to—or, no—just faster than he cared to react to. He let Chris slam him against his own wall, regarding him with distant eyes.

“You want to run that by me again?”

Derek could have laughed just then, but he didn’t care to do that either. “It was Kate. Kate Argent is possessing Stiles—”

Another rough slam.

“My sister is _not_ a demon.”

Now Derek had to set his jaw to keep from doing something—laughing, ripping Chris’ throat out, he didn’t know what. He flexed his fingers at his sides, felt his claws grow and sharpen until they were pressing sharp points into his palms. “Then it was a very, _very_ good actress.”

“Chris, man.” Dean’s scent was suddenly closer, his hand closing on Chris’s shoulder. The movement was a dull glimmer out of the edge of Derek’s vision, his eyes locked with Chris’. “I believe it even less than you do, but throwing Derek around isn’t going to help.”

From some deep, smoldering rage in his gut, Derek managed to shove Chris back—and Dean by extension. “Is that so? Because half an hour ago you were ready to kill me just for _thinking_ I was behind these murders!’

And he wasn’t even mad about that—not even in part. He was physically, mentally, and emotionally incapable of caring _less_ about it.

But he didn’t know what to do besides be angry. He didn’t know what to do other than be afraid, because the psycho he’d been rid of for _two years_ came back for a repeat appearance. Except this time she had—

He stumbled out the door and onto the back porch.

\-------------------------------------------------------

After he calmed down, he listened to the conversation with the most interest he could muster—which was none at all. Castiel explained that Kate being the demon was possible, because Derek’s testimony to wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough that he’d had her close enough to make his skin crawl all over again. Because the hunters are idiots. Because clearly Chris Argent and his fucking family were the _only ones_ suffering from all of this. Because of ten thousand other reasons that Derek couldn’t fathom right then because he was bouncing between homicide and suicide so quickly that he couldn’t _think_.

“Hey.”

And Dean’s voice was just the last thing in the world he wanted to hear.

So he didn’t reply. He silently hoped that Dean would take the hint and leave him alone, but one of the qualifications for being a hunter is doing the opposite of what was wanted.

“Allison has this crazy idea that you’re not actually pissed off about us trying to kill you,” Dean explained. There was something to his voice—to his scent—that would have thrown Derek off if he wasn’t spiking high in apathy right then.

Derek wanted his voice to be angry, but it just felt strained. Tired. “This might shock you, but I have more important things to be angry about than a group of hunters who don’t know what they’re doing.”

“Like the ex-girlfriend from Hell?” Dean chuckled. “Literally, in this case.”

Derek’s fingers tightened into his palms again, stretching his skin tight over his knuckles. But he didn’t get up to hit Dean the way he wanted to. He didn’t know why, because he’d slammed Stiles against a few things for mentioning her in the past. It certainly wasn’t because Dean was any more of a threat.

“I’m taking that as a yes,” Dean continued. He finally stepped around Derek and off the porch, the surrounding leaves and twigs crunching under his feet. Derek lifted his attention; Dean’s eyes widened. “Whoa. Nice special effects.”

Derek hadn’t noticed that his vision was red. He was seeing Dean as clear as day. Unsurprisingly, it just made him more angry.

Then, like a shot, Dean’s voice was serious. “We’ll take care of—of Kate.”

“Not if it means killing Stiles.”

Dean’s heartbeat stuttered in his chest, as though he hadn’t expected that response. “Wait—the kid?”

Derek’s head jerked to the side, his wolf rearing up. His fangs dug into his tongue, sharp and _aching_ to rip someone’s throat out. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath through his nose.

‘ _You ever try that whole counting to ten trick? It works wonders for rage issues…_ ’ 

Just hearing him in his head made Derek hurt.

“He’s more than just a kid.”

“Yeah, okay,” Dean started. “He’s Scott’s best friend and friends with Allison and part of your pack. Is that it? I mean, what’s he to you?”

“Everything.”

And normally Derek would pause, would give himself time to consider a plausible lie to deny it, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. If he or Stiles or both of them were dying soon—he wasn’t going to hide this. Not the way he had for the past two years. He wasn’t going to _die_ hiding this. 

Dean’s scent changed—his heartbeat flipped—and Derek wasn’t that surprised. A good part of the reason that no one thought anything more of his relationship with Stiles was because of how _unlikely_ it was. First because of Stiles’ crush on Lydia, but now just because of him. No one looked at Derek and assumed that he’d be seeing a hyperactive teenager—why should they? Society as a whole was sort of inept that way.

Still, it was the closest he’d ever come to actually telling anyone about their relationship. He blinked at the ground, trying to gauge the feeling, but he couldn’t. Not past all the other convoluted feelings chasing through him. Dean’s reaction to it seemed almost inconsequential compared to his own. After all, what should it matter to him what some random hunter thought? 

“You’re—” But Dean didn’t seem to know how to finish the sentence. “I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with it—”

“I know there isn’t,” Derek said, and his voice was level only because of the sheer apathy. 

“—I just wasn’t really expecting you to lay it out like that.”

Derek glanced off towards the steps, exasperated and maybe annoyed because he’d never liked explaining himself. “Wasn’t really expecting to do it.”

Dean’s laugh was out of place—like he didn’t know if he should have laughed. “I can honestly say I didn’t see it coming.”

Derek managed a snort at that, but he wasn’t really amused. “You didn’t? Because I can smell that guy in the trench-coat all over you, and not in the way that comes from driving around in a car for hours.”

Derek suspected that was something Dean never anticipated being caught in, because he shut up immediately. It didn’t matter, though, because there was nothing closer to the bottom of the ‘List-of-Things-I-Care-About’ than the relationship between the two hunters. 

He dropped his head, curled his fingers into his hair, and tempered down the urge to run after Stiles—no, after Kate. If he were just running after Stiles, he wouldn’t be nearly so conflicted. He’d go anywhere Stiles went.

“He’s all I’ve got,” Derek said softly, because it was about time he came to terms with it. Not just to him and his wolf and this stupid idea he had of telling Stiles—but out loud to someone. He just hadn’t thought it’d be some hunter he barely knew. “And everything else I _think_ I have? It’d be gone the second I lost him.”

“Would this be the appropriate time to say ‘I told you so’?”

Castiel’s voice startled Derek enough to make him jump, nearly pulling a muscle with how quickly he turned to look at him. Even when he did, Castiel’s attention was fixed on Dean from his place on the porch. Derek was pretty sure that was not a rhetorical question.

“What’s he talking about?” Derek asked.

“Really, Cas? You’re choosing _now_ to gloat?”

“I’m not gloating,” Castiel informed. “It was a reasonable inquiry.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Yes, okay? Yes.”

“Alright.” Castiel nodded, as though he wasn’t going to say anything more, but, “Then: I told you so.”

“And there it is,” Dean threw out his arms just to let them fall against his thighs a second later.

Derek growled. “What was he talking about?”

Castiel walked down the three steps leading onto the dirt, and as Derek watched him it became abundantly clear _why_ Dean’s smell was entwined with Castiel’s. All Derek could think about was how many times Stiles had said _he’d_ had issues with personal space. Clearly he had nothing on Castiel.

“Shortly after meeting you, I informed Dean that you have a good soul,” Castiel said. If Derek had to guess, the monotone might have had a hint of pride to it.

But he didn’t muse on it long before he was remembering the conversation from before. “When you said you knew what you knew.”

Castiel nodded. “Unfortunately, Dean is very stubborn.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time you were wrong,” Dean argued.

“True as that may be, it also isn’t the first time I’ve been right, Dean.”

“I don’t see what any of this has to do with saving Stiles,” Derek pointed out, standing up. 

“It doesn’t have anything to do with saving Stiles,” Castiel informed him. “Well, not directly. Indirectly it now means that I may assist you without Dean being angry with me.”

Derek couldn’t help but raise a brow. “You care that he gets angry at you?” It seemed rather hard to believe it. The constant monotone Castiel spoke in made it seem impossible that he’d care about anything.

Dean crossed his arms with a shrug. “He’s still sort of new to this whole ‘human’ thing. Sometimes I don’t explain stuff when I’m mad, and he doesn’t like asking other people about it.”

Derek shook his head, pulling himself back to the fact at hand. “Why does it matter that you can help me?”

“I can exorcise the demon without hurting your friend.”

\-------------------------------------------------------

The help, as it turned out, wasn’t much of a help. Kate was smart and thought ahead. She’d thought far enough ahead that the entire reason Castiel hadn’t seen that Stiles was possessed in the first place was because she’d taken measures against it. While they agreed that there was no way that Kate would have known Dean and Castiel would come to town, she knew now. She knew enough in advance to make sure she had something to block Castiel before they met. She’d known for days—ever since she heard Allison tell them about it. They’d dropped almost all the information she needed right in her lap; now Stiles was paying for it.

No one was telling him what it meant that Stiles was possessed, not really, and Derek couldn’t decide if he wanted to know enough to ask. A barricade had formed in his mind, making him second guess every slight motion that he made. He even questioned his breathing, because how the hell could he be sitting there _breathing_ when Kate was doing god-knew-what with Stiles’ body?

“I’m going to find him,” Derek announced.

Scott stood up. “I’m going with you.” Derek opened his mouth to tell him to forget it, but Scott pressed on. “He’s my _best friend_ , Derek. I’m not letting you go after him alone.”

“No one is going anywhere,” Chris announced. His attention went pointedly to Derek, leaving him with the sense that Chris knew something more than what he was saying. “Not until we have a plan. If we go in there half-cocked then everyone—including Stiles—could be killed.”

“So, you acknowledge that Kate would do something like that?” And maybe part of Derek’s rage really was founded in the fact that Chris had dared to argue with him. When he’d seen Kate Argent possess the closest person to him; when she’d _admitted_ to her presence in Stiles’ body. And to her willingness to hurt him if Derek shouldn’t comply. The edges of Derek’s vision tinted an illuminated red. “Where was that willingness to blame eight years ago?”

He could taste the tension in the air, and watched as Chris shut up and Allison’s attention diverted away. Derek didn’t care about sparing either of their feelings, not when the Argents had a history of nonchalance about their crimes. Not when the people he cared about had to keep _suffering_ because of them.

Derek pushed away from the table. “I’m going.”

“Derek.” Chris’ voice was measured and even. It made Derek grind his teeth together. “You’re just putting Stiles in danger.”

For as much as he wanted to tell Argent to back off, to tell him to shut up about how to run his pack or how to protect what was his, Derek didn’t. His shoulders tightened to the point that the muscles ached—then they dropped. A weight settled on his shoulders, too heavy and endless to begin to understand. _How had he let this happen?_

He started for the door and saw Dean shift out of the edge of his vision. He brought up a hand. “He’s right. I’m just getting some air.”

He stepped outside again, but, this time, even the expanse of the woods was suffocating. It encroached on his lungs, made it hard to breathe and harder to think. He’d never been one for talking through plans—he’d never been one for plans to begin with—and now he cared for them even less. While they all tried to figure out the safest way to make sure everyone got out alive, _Stiles_ was being paraded around by a psychopath. He was the only one at risk, but no one cared enough to see it. 

Derek punched a chunk out of the nearest tree, sending splinters and pieces of wood across the ground. Then, in rage or in mercy, he took another chunk out and let it fall. Inside the house he heard chairs scrape across the floor and confused curses, but he didn’t move. Behind him, people lingered in the doorway, their scents mingling in shock and concern. Dean was the first to break the silence, making some quip about it to ease the tension, but Derek couldn’t make it out past the ringing in his ears.

 _Count to ten. Seriously, man. Deep breaths._ How, after everything, had he let this happen? He’d failed to protect so much already—he thought he was supposed to learn from his mistakes. _Not everything is your fault, you know? I’m a big kid, even if I’m not some super wolf or lizard monster thing. I’m pretty awesome, and sarcasm is totally a viable defense technique. I’m thinking of opening a dojo—_

He pressed his hands over his ears, but he couldn’t figure out if he was trying to keep Stiles’ voice out or keep it in. His mind recycled words and conversations they’d held, as if there was any useful bit of advice in any of it. As if Stiles would have known what to do any more than he did.

_I suggest you follow me when you’ve lost some of the baggage._

He dropped his hands, sliding one into the back pocket of his jeans. His fingertips brushed against a slip of paper—folded at least four times—before he pulled it out. He only looked over it once before glancing over his shoulder at the house, finding that his fit had been enough to get the rest of the party to leave him alone. And really, that was all he needed.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright guys, a warning is required for this episode. This chapter is mostly **torture/violence**. If you're triggered by these things, then don't read and just wait for the next chapter. Get a friend to summarize for you. Do what you have to, but this is your fair warning.
> 
> Otherwise, thanks for all the interest in this story. I really appreciate it more than you guys know. Every comment, every kudo, does wonders for the ego that I spend too much time beating into the ground. XD You all keep me motivated. : )

He didn’t recognize the building that the slip of paper led him to, but he didn’t have to. He could smell Argents all over it, even if the scent was faded by months—years, even—of disuse. It was a cement building, inconspicuous looking. There was some vandalism on the outside, a tangled mess of blacks, greens, blues and reds that made it difficult for Derek to make out where the door was when he jumped the chain-link fence. A key pad was placed next to it, but the instant he bent to pick up a scent trail for the code, the door opened. Electronic. Derek tilted his head and found the security camera pointed on him from the edge of the building.

The inside of the building was dark, but ahead of him a light flickered over a set of stairs leading down. Icy fingers wove themselves through his intestines, making his insides shudder as a result. He clenched his fingers then relaxed them and started forward. Knowing Kate, there was no telling which wrong move would be the one to put the nail in his coffin—or worse yet, Stiles’.

Cement walls rose up around him as he went down, the basement dank and stifling but not reeking of anything repulsive. There was the faintest scent of Stiles though, and it stood out to him like a sweet melody over the cacophony of a New York subway. The floor was wet under his boots when he finally braved the last step, but a quick scan said that it wasn’t everywhere. The florescent lighting overhead was painful, but only because of the horror movie chic of the entire thing. It was like this was some cosmic joke the universe was playing on him, some prank that he’d been the butt of.

But the sobriety of a cold reality washed over him when he followed Stiles’ scent to its thickest end. Derek choked down something swollen and acrid as he moved forward, slow and disjointed. 

It was a bed—more of a cot, really—with a simple but sturdy frame screwed into the floor on all four posts. The mattress was old, covered with a white cotton sheet that smelled so obscenely of Stiles that it was almost a punch in the gut. There was no pillow; it wasn’t set up for comfort. That much was apparent by the leather straps, four of them, attached to the edge of the frame. Two wrists, two ankles—

“Don’t worry, that’s not for you.”

Derek spun around, wide eyes settling on the figure leaning against the heavy support beam in the middle of the room. He cursed himself for being so distracted by the bed, but she wasn’t moving towards him. There wasn’t anything hostile about her scent at all. Stiles—Kate—wasn’t looking at him. She was fiddling with a circle of plastic in her hands, turning it over and over as though it were orbiting around some invisible point in the center. When eyes did look up to find him they were black for a split second, then settled back to Stiles’ brown. That pressure from earlier started inside Derek’s chest again, stretching his ribs and robbing him of air.

Derek swallowed, waited until his voice felt steady again to speak. “What’s it going to take to make you get out of him?”

He could hear Kate in the laugh more than Stiles, and the hour or two of time between their confrontation and now had allowed his wolf to clear its head. They were still two separate sides, pulling at the torn shreds of reason left from earlier, but at least it knew that this wasn’t Stiles. It smelled and sounded like Stiles, but it didn’t _feel_ like him. 

She pushed away from the support beam and moved to twirling the circle on her finger. Derek glimpsed a thick, black box attached to it before it disappeared in her palm. “What? No threats to rip my head off this time around?”

Derek dropped his eyes to her feet and pressed his lips together. Suddenly Kate was in his vision again, ducking her head slightly to catch his eyes, and Derek was torn between meeting them and averting them. He averted them, but caught the smile stretching across a face never meant to hold a smile like that.

“So, they filled you in.” She turned around, shoving her hands in the pockets of Stiles’ jeans. “I was sort of hoping I’d get to tell you the good news myself, but I guess this saves me some time—”

His anger swelled, hot and helpless. “What do you _want_ , Kate?”

She didn’t turn around. “Did they tell you he can see and hear everything?”

The words were a black pollutant in the air, leeching the oxygen from Derek’s lungs and replacing it with tar. No, they hadn’t seen fit to share that fact with him. His vision went blurry and gray.

“Oh yeah,” she continued. She reached up to tap Stiles’ temple, but his eyes were sluggish to follow the motion. “He’s been screaming for you for _weeks_. Talkative kid—colorful vocabulary, too.” She spun around, her voice lowering. “You didn’t hear a thing, did you, Derek?”

But the expression was clear on her face that she wasn’t expecting Derek to stalk closer when he did. Her eyes widened for a moment as his fingers gripped her arms, and she jerked out of instinct. She wasn’t used to Stiles’ body—not in a fight anyway—but it didn’t matter. The last thing on Derek’s mind was hurting her, not if it meant hurting Stiles by extension.

“Stiles,” his throat felt tight, but he pushed through it. His eyes flicked between the brown ones in front of him, struggling to see past the demon on the surface. He didn’t know what he was looking for—not really—but it didn’t stop him. “I’m sorry.”

A full thirty seconds of silence passed between them. Thirty seconds of Derek not knowing what he expected, of hoping despite the fact that he really should have learned to stop doing that by now. 

Then Kate laughed. “ _Wow._ ” Her hands moved up to his, peeling them off. Her voice was dripping with cruelty that surpassed simple sarcasm. “That’s…really touching, Derek. I almost teared up there.”

He snarled, felt an unprecedented rage move like a tempest through him even as dropped his hands. He told himself that he wasn’t really expecting that to do anything. He told himself that all that mattered was that Stiles heard it, that he knew, because Derek was pretty much certain now that he wasn't getting through this alive. 

“Maybe I’ll rip your throat out as a mercy to Stiles!”

She blinked, eyebrows raised as though she were _surprised_ by the suggestion. “Do you really have that in you, Derek?”

Something in her voice was too familiar—too knowing. It wove its way across Derek’s body like a thread of freezing air.

“After your family? Your uncle?” She tilted Stiles’ head, her gaze discerning. “Do you really have it in you to kill your mate, too?”

His entire existence ground to a shuddering halt, like a car skidding on its emergency break. 

Another slow smile was juxtaposed on Stiles’ face. She wrinkled Stiles’ nose playfully. “Oh yeah, sweetie, I know. You may not have done the dirty yet, but I know.”

Derek tried to think of something—anything—to refute it, but his mind stopped working somewhere in the spaces between her words. He watched her cross Stiles’ arms, the weight shifting from one foot to another as she studied him. The satisfaction was potent and suffocating.

“It’s a crying shame you didn’t get to tell him yourself, but that’s your style, isn’t it?” She ‘tsked’ him again, and the sound punctuated the silence like gunfire. She walked forward, tilting her head as she shook it. “Too busy keeping everything bottled up inside. Don’t you remember how that worked out for you last time?”

Her hands found his hips and slid up his sides. He was still rooted to the spot, staring at nothing while the rest of him tried to catch up with the revelation—with the words out in the open. Months spent trying to decide if he should tell Stiles at all, not wanting to bog him down when he had to leave for college soon, feeling some inner part of him choking on the realization—thrilled and terrified. He wasn’t sentimental, but he didn’t want it to be this. He didn’t want Stiles to find out like _this_.

“Or didn’t,” Kate cooed, tilting her chin up so eyes—black again—met clear hazel. Her smile was a venom-tipped knife. “As the case may be.”

He didn’t know how she knew, but he didn’t have to. The fact was there, and even if Derek hadn’t confirmed it, if Stiles really could see him, then he’d know. One of the most irritating things about Stiles was always his ability to see right through anything Derek could have put up. And this…he was wearing this on his face, plain as day. It pinched something tight inside of him, that last fact stripped away and leaving a gaping void behind. Not even a wound, which would hurt and _feel_ , but a void. An absence. There was nothing, now, that Kate hadn’t managed to taint.

Her hand moved up to his shoulder, and Derek didn’t realize he’d dropped his eyes down again until Stiles’ T-shirt came into focus. Her fingers curled into the leather of his jacket. “Why don’t you take this off and stay a while?”

Derek almost refused, but the second his eyes lifted to her face the urge evaporated. He shrugged out of his jacket—let Kate push it off his shoulders, the circle of black resting in the crook of Stiles’ elbow now—and felt its heavy weight sink to the floor behind him. The cool air of the basement teased across his arms, but it wasn’t the air that made chills shoot through him. It was the flashbacks, the sensory memories; he’d been trapped. He’d been weak.

He’d been here before, with Kate, in this place where he was powerless.

He didn’t notice her fingers on his shoulders until she was squeezing, pushing a weight on him. It was only superficial—just Stiles’ physical strength—but he was almost too tired to even hold that.

“On your knees, sweetie.”

Derek’s anger snapped back into him like a rubber-band, rearing up hard inside. His eyes blazed red, neck jerking as the power laced through the muscles and closed around his mind. He opened his mouth in a roar, fangs stretched and claws coiled—

And her hands didn’t move away. If anything, she dug them in harder.

“Do it, or I gut him myself.” She smiled, too sweet and too sharp for Stiles face. There was nothing to imply that she was lying—not in her eyes, and not in Stiles’ chest, where Derek could hear the steady pulse of a heart that didn’t belong to the cold promise. “And, hey, as a bonus, you’ll get to be with him as the life drains out.”

Not a glimpse of the earlier worry showed in her features, not even a glimmer of the fear for her life. Nothing. She’d won, and she knew it. _She knew it_. Knew him. She knew his games and his strategies and his defenses. She knew him so deeply in all the ways that made it easy for her to gouge his insides out and hold them in the palms of her hands. She knew how to win, which was something he had never quite mastered.

Derek dropped to his knees.

\-------------------------------------------------------

The collar smelled strongly of new and vaguely burned plastic when Kate’s fingers fixed it around is throat. Derek made it a point to stare at the ceiling, to push any and all thoughts out of his mind—even the lingering ones of Stiles’ voice. It was because he did this that he didn’t see her pull the control out of one of the pockets of Stiles’ jeans.

It was because he did this that he was unprepared when the first electrical shock rocketed through his body and dropped him onto his front. His chin slammed into the concrete. He used the momentum of the current going through his muscles to roll onto his back, but the charge was still strong. For five seconds it raced across his nerves, setting everything inside him on fire with crackling energy.

Then it stopped, and he was left with aftershocks that made his body spasm in uncoordinated jerks.

\-------------------------------------------------------

Kate sat on the edge of the bed, her legs crossed in a way that Derek had never seen Stiles sit in all their time together. The remote was suspended between her fingers, held so limp of a grip that Derek could take it the moment he got his body back under control. But he didn’t consider it for more than a second, instead rolling onto his side and planting his hand against the floor. He set his jaw and focused on the ground, the rough pattern in the concrete swimming in front of his eyes. The arm pressed under the weight of his body twitched, and he curled his hand into a fist in an attempt to make it still.

“Why did you come back here?” The question came more from the electricity still dancing invisible patterns under his skin, a driving need to do _something_ , and his brain just forced it into the question at the last minute.

“Good question,” she praised. “I have this pet peeve about leaving unfinished business. I thought it was sort of poetic to leave you and your sister alive, but clearly that came back and bit me in the ass.”

Derek wasn’t sure what he meant to accomplish by asking—it wasn’t like buying himself any time would help. He’d masked his scent before coming, hoping to just figure out what Kate wanted so she’d go. He hated plans. The one failing with plans was that they almost never worked out the way that they were supposed to. 

“I’m pretty much set to be a crossroads demon; I thought I’d be pretty good at that,” she continued. Derek listened to the bed creak as she got up; the sparks of electricity were starting to fade but his muscles ached in movement. She squatted in front of him, but he didn’t look at her. Her voice dropped in implication, and even _that_ was so very _Kate_ that he wished he could block out the way that it wrapped around Stiles’ voice. “I mean, you know firsthand how persuasive I can be.”

He pressed his cheek against the floor, raked his claws into it hard enough that scratches were left. Fingers curled into his hair a second later and yanked his head back up; her lips brushed against his ear. “You’re the gold star on my resume, Derek.”

She let go seconds before a new jolt started. He threw himself onto his back again, slammed his head hard enough into the concrete that it broke under his skull. It was shorter this time, but it didn’t matter. His body scrambled for repairs, unsure where to start, and he could smell the burned skin around his throat more than he could feel it. 

“But I told them I had a little business to finish before I started my new job.” She walked around him to the bed again and took a seat. “Really, I was just going to frame you for the murders and get the hell out of Dodge. But then, when the time came…I just couldn’t resist. Well, that, and I was pretty sure Chris was going to give you the benefit of the doubt. He feels bad about that whole fire thing.”

Derek screamed, but it was more of a roar, and he wasn’t sure which particular pain it came from: the physical stabs of electricity, the mental agony of wanting to rip out his mate’s throat just to make the thing inside of him _stop_ , or the emotional ache of everything Kate said. Was in the process of saying. Maybe it was an impossible tangle of things that did it, but he didn’t care. This was so beyond screwed up, so far from where he was supposed to be right now— 

Suddenly Kate was kneeling over him, pushing her hands back through his hair, and it was gentle. It was something Stiles would have done because of his constant need to fidget. “I know, baby. I probably could have spared you a lot of pain just by killing you eight years ago, huh?” 

And she could have, even if Derek didn’t bother to confirm it. He didn’t think he had to, anyway.

\-------------------------------------------------------

Derek wasn’t surprised to find that there was more to it than the collar. Kate had made it clear more than once when she was still alive that she would have loved the challenge of driving him to his limits. Now, she had all the time in the world for it. He wasn’t sure how long she’d spent just talking to him amidst the periodic shocks. His muscles were fried and strung out under the skin, useless to do anything beyond random twitches when the aftershocks hit.

The current stopped and she planted Stiles’ weight on his hips mid-thrash, straddling him. His back contorted anyway, arching off the floor, and struggling to dislodge the pressure, but he couldn’t even do that much. Hands planted on his chest and a flickering spark tried to place them as soothing through the chaos of his nerves. It was a futile effort.

He didn’t know where the knife came from, but it cut through the front of his shirt with relative ease. The cuts were precise—one down the center, and one for each sleeve—so he didn’t even have to move for her to get it off. In the cruelest ways, that was something of a blessing for him. 

He coughed—gasped, more like—at the tremor started by another pocket of electricity loosening up. Something splattered across the cement next to him, warm and wet, but he wasn’t sure what it was. Outside of the fact that it wasn’t blood, at least, because there was no coppery taste in his mouth. He hoped it was saliva.

“Just how I left you,” she purred in appreciation, trailing Stiles’ fingertips over his chest. The sound came too easy to her, misplaced on Stiles’ voice. He tried to ignore the caresses smoothing over his skin, forced himself to keep them from his memory. He wasn’t going to associate Stiles with any of this. It would just be another way for Kate to win.

The knife came back down again, cutting a deep, long line from collarbone to the base of his sternum. Derek gritted his teeth, fingers flexing at his sides. 

“Your body’s a little distracted with the aftershocks.” Derek turned his head, watching her reach over to a black case sitting within well within his arm’s reach. He heard the metallic scrape of her unscrewing something, flipping a lid aside for a container he couldn’t see, but the scent that followed unmistakable. His body seized in its urge to run, trying to cooperate with his instincts but finding it virtually impossible. Kate looked back at him and wrinkled her nose a little as she smiled. “This is gonna sting.”

She sprinkled the fine grains of aconite on the open wound in his chest before working them in with her thumb.

\-------------------------------------------------------

Derek barely managed to roll onto his side before the inky liquid spewed out of his mouth, joining the pool steadily forming next to him. He sputtered and struggled to cough the remaining droplets out with his temple pressed to the floor. His eyes watered, vision driven red by the black veins of poison that wound under his skin. The cuts weren’t deep enough to taint his blood, but that would have been a gift by this point. The thick, raised ridges burrowed under his skin were sensitive to the touch—and Kate kept running callused fingers over them.

Eventually there would be enough of them to kill him. He’d lost track of the amount of cuts that lined his body. He’d lost track of how many places and how many times Kate had carved into him and laced each wound with a new touch of wolfsbane. The floor was covered in his body’s black attempts at healing itself, some of it slick over his arms and back from his efforts to make it to a cleaner space after Kate got off of him. It didn’t matter in the end—he couldn’t stop choking it up.

The next time it hit he couldn’t move. His attempts to breathe were met with gurgles and liquid flooding into his lungs. Kate paced around him, considering, before she kicked him onto his front and the substance spilled from between his lips. He gasped for air, fingers slipping in the oil-like vomit as he tried to get his hands under him. He’d managed to get a few inches off the ground before Stiles’ weight was hitting him again, dropping him against the cement. He groaned, tried to curl on himself, but he could barely coordinate a finger into moving, let alone his whole body.

“Funny,” she said, and it was the first thing she’d said in hours. “For all that you’re better for being an alpha, I think this hurts you even more than it did last time. Or is that just because of the body I’m wearing to do it?”

From some deep reservoir of strength, Derek managed to fling her off. He heard her slide across the clean cement to his right, the remote to the collar bouncing under the bed, then the rough scrape of rubber soles and skin as she scrambled further backwards. He roared, the throb of his muscles and skin amplifying, as he pushed himself up to his feet again to stalk after her. When the expression—Kate’s fear but on Stiles’ face—in front of him finally came into focus he swallowed the terror on Stiles’, the questions she was asking herself—had she gone too far? Was her mate card was truly enough to keep him contained?

And maybe it wasn’t. He’d already lost enough—what was one more person? In the long line of things he couldn’t protect, what was Stiles, really?

A fit of body rocking nausea hit him, bringing him to all fours as he threw up again. It was all the distraction Kate needed.

The shock that followed seemed short, somehow, but it wasn’t until Derek hit his back again that he realized why. His eyes briefly rolled up, out of his control, to show a shadow along the ceiling. He tried to breathe through his nose, to use his senses, but all he could smell was the organic mess he’d left across the floor. It made another wave of nausea overtake him, and he curled in on himself to choke it down.

Then something followed that he didn’t have to see or smell—a growl. It wasn’t his, not even instinctively, because it came from across the room, near the door. Derek forced his eyes open, red vision watery and only getting worse, but he could see shapes in the door frame. Two of them, at least, one smaller than the other, but before he could make out anything else he was gagging again.

What followed was something Derek could barely keep up with, between the pain and the stench and the sheer chaos of it all. He slowly navigated backwards, searching for the support beam Kate had hidden behind when he first arrived. It took concerted effort to prop himself up against it and then more effort not to heave into his own lap. 

Away from the smell, his eyes closed, he could pick out the scents of his pack. It wasn’t just Scott and Allison, but Danny and Lydia too, and, although it had no scent, he assumed Jackson’s Kanima form to be involved. Distantly—maybe stupidly—he wondered how long he’d been gone that they had come back to Beacon Hills by now. The association of safety made him shut down despite every defense telling him otherwise. His vision was even worse when he opened his eyes again.

But then, so was the situation.

Lydia, Danny, and Scott didn’t have their feet on the ground anymore, pinned to the walls the same as the hunters had been. Allison was lying on the floor and Derek could see her face—eyes open and terrified—and knew that it had been a run-in with Jackson that caused it. But Jackson himself was no where to be seen, and Derek couldn’t make his head coordinate enough to look at the ceiling.

“Did you really think some kind of ambush by a bunch of high schoolers was going to work?” Kate was asking. Her voice sounded like it had to move through layers of drywall just to hit Derek’s ears. She was stepping closer to Lydia, and all Derek could think of was the special place the girl still had in Stiles’ heart. 

“No, of course not,” Lydia replied. “But can I just point out one thing before you set out with the eviscerating and rubbing our entrails in Derek’s face?”

Kate laughed, leaning too close to Lydia’s prone form, and Derek couldn’t _move_ despite the thunderous beats of Lydia’s heart. He slammed his head against the support beam behind him, snarled in effort, but his body was too exhausted—to polluted—to listen anymore.

“I like your style,” Kate answered. “What do you want to say?”

“We graduated.” It was simple and so full of that arrogance that took Derek too long to get used to for her to die now.

Suddenly a fire flared up in front of the doorway, and Kate was shocked enough that she reeled back and dropped the standing members of his pack. A second later there were new and familiar scents on the scene. Derek didn’t need to look up to know it was the hunters, and neither did Kate. Derek fuzzily watched her run back towards him, stooping to pick something up. He couldn’t make out what it was, but there was a ferocity coming off of her in waves. It was all a game up until now, but this is different.

“Take out the rest of the sigils!” Dean shouted from the door, and Derek’s eyes slid just enough to the side that he can see more pockets of flame erupting in his direction before just going out a second later.

Then Stiles was in front of him, kneeling down, and Derek could see the object Kate had picked up even if he couldn’t quite force his eyes to meet hers. He lurched forward as she brought her arm up, all teeth and panic, but it wasn’t enough. A thick pinprick jabbed through the skin of his left arm, something hot injected under the surface, and he felt sick all over again. Weight dropped into his lap, pinning him down, and she planted her hands to either side of his head, a crazed and winning smile on her face.

Without a word she reached for Derek’s limp left hand—his claws extended because of the wolfsbane’s drive in his system—and brought it up to Stiles’ throat. His eyes widened, the muscles uncooperative as the new brand of poison laced through them from the syringe still in his arm. She leaned against his ear.

“At least you won’t have to live with yourself.” She dragged his claws hard into the skin, through vein and muscle and flesh.

Stiles’ blood pooled over Derek’s fingers, and the hand holding his went limp.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been notified that I should leave another warning here for **character death**. If this is something that will trigger you in any way, then please don't read it. Again, I suggest getting a friend to summarize it or something. 
> 
> But, because I'm selfish like that, please do keep in mind that there is no fic TAG for character death, despite my warning. There's a reason for that.
> 
> Again, thank you all so much for reading. It means the world to me. I also have a tumblr, so it's kind of cool going on and seeing my fic being rec'd. : ) It's nice to know that it's worth reading.

The was a flash of white light before he lost consciousness. It didn’t fit with the sticky scent drowning him.

\-------------------------------------------------------

Everything was gray in his mind. 

The cemetery grass, the sky, the clouds. He had some sense that it was warm, that the sky was probably supposed to be blue, but it was all just dim. There were people around him, but he was alone. They moved in slow motion, puppets without faces, and nothing about them connected through the monochromatic scheme. He was staring at something, but it was like seeing a shadow through a veil. 

— _Stilinski_ — 

He hated wearing suits. They were stifling and thick, cutting him off from the rest of his senses. Each piece of them was a level of containment, of cellophane wrapped around his skin. He always felt like he was six feet underground in a suit.

— _1996-2014_ —

He wanted to reach through the choke-hold of gray matter, but he didn’t. It was like reaching for the light that cast the shadows and knowing that he’d be burned. The second he got too close, he’d be torched. He could practically smell the burning skin—

— _Beloved son_ —

—the sparse flecks of blood between peeled back layers—

— _friend_ —

the death of it all.

\-------------------------------------------------------

Obituaries and epitaphs were amazing things.

It was incredible how little they managed to capture about the person they stood as a testimony to.

\-------------------------------------------------------

— _mate_ —

That’s what it didn’t say. 

And why should it?

\-------------------------------------------------------

Derek hated epitaphs. 

They never said enough. They stood as reminders for the people who knew the person—for people like him—to forever know that it was never enough. That there was so much more to say, to do, to _live_ —

They were cruel jokes.

“Here lies another life that had so much more to it. More than you’ll ever know, now.”

“Here lies another person you couldn’t protect.”

“Here lay the ones you put in the ground.”

\-------------------------------------------------------

He was tired.

\-------------------------------------------------------

“Wow. That’s a lot of people, isn’t it?”

\-------------------------------------------------------

Just so tired.

\-------------------------------------------------------

It wasn’t weird to hear Stiles in his head. After a year of being with someone intimately, and two years of being with them as another person, their voice just stuck. Derek wasn’t confused by the teenager’s voice in his head, running over old conversations and arguments and research. There wasn’t anything Stiles wouldn’t talk about, given the opportunity. Derek sort of took it upon himself to give him that chance after a certain point, even if it ended in a lot of bickering and rough handling. 

No, Stiles’ voice in his head didn’t confuse him in the slightest.

What did confuse him, though, was when the old intonations in the discussions stopped being old. It confused him when the arguments started turning into something more panicked and certainly unfamiliar. It baffled him when he realized that sometimes the voice, imprinted so deeply in his mind, wasn’t talking to him, it was talking to someone else.

Sometimes the voice talked to him, but the words were choked by the gray haze and impossible to make out. Still, Derek knew that whatever was being said would have been new, too.

\-------------------------------------------------------

It had been months (he was pretty sure), so maybe he was just going insane.

The thought was kind of a relief, almost.

\-------------------------------------------------------

The first thing to cut through the thick smudge of fog was a warm weight on his stomach. It was familiar, somehow, and pleasant.

Except it was completely weird because Derek was standing in his kitchen, and there was nothing pressed against his stomach. He even ran his hand over it to tell, but the faint pressure didn’t go away. It was like an invisible, intangible source of distant comfort. Of ease.

It stayed with him for a while, even after he moved up to his room to lie down.

\-------------------------------------------------------

It was still there when he woke up.

\-------------------------------------------------------

The pressure came and went after that, and Derek learned to just enjoy it. There was something in the back of his mind that told him it wasn’t hurting him, so there wasn’t any point in being too suspicious. Plus it soothed something else, some suppressed part of him, that felt strained and stretched all the time. 

After a while, he started feeling gentle touches against his face. Sometimes they stayed—pressed against his cheek, his forehead, his neck—and sometimes they were just caresses. The first time it happened he reeled backwards but, like the ones to his stomach, they followed him. They weren’t something he could run from. 

Some part of him didn’t want to run, anyway.

\-------------------------------------------------------

Then he got tired. Very tired. It wasn’t just that he didn’t want to get out of bed, it was that he couldn’t. His muscles were laced with metal, making every small twitch require an exponential amount of effort. It scared him, and he admitted it to himself because there was no one else around to hear it anyway.

But it seemed like the second he confessed it, one of the warm spots started on his forehead. He had trouble worrying about it after that. It was a thousand times easier just to sleep.

\-------------------------------------------------------

He woke up to voices talking around him, and his ears throbbed harmlessly at the sounds. They were the clearest sounds he’d heard in months, which was a strange thing to think, but honest enough. His body was sore, and his head was split crudely into fourths. 

“—you guys just totally let him go off on his own?” Stiles. Impossible, but Stiles. There was a sort of outrage dancing on the fringe of his words, one that Derek had been on the receiving end of several times. Enough times to know that the outrage was actually more the root of the words than the decoration.

“We didn’t _let_ him do anything. He ran off. We just knew that’s what he’d do when we came outside and he was gone.” The voice wasn’t as familiar as Stiles’ was, but Derek knew it. He couldn’t put a name to it, and seeing as he couldn’t _move_ , he just let himself lie there and think about it.

“Well, how did you know?” Stiles again. Derek could feel his fingers dancing nervous patterns over the back of his hand; he could hear the anxious bounce of his foot on the floor.

“Dean—” That’s right, Dean. And the current one talking was the angel. “—has done similarly reckless things to protect those he cares about.”

Stiles was silent for all of five seconds—and as much as he knew he’d consider that a blessing any other day, right now he just needed him to keep talking—before he spoke up again. The outrage was down a bit, but not by much. “I stand by what I said. You used him as—as some kind of demon GPS system!”

Dean’s voice raised a bit, making Derek’s hackles rise. “Hey, no one _asked_ him to go chasing after you, alright? In fact, we all told him to stay the hell away—”

“—because just _telling_ Derek to do something always works out so well! He’s a regular team player, let me tell you. Didn’t you see the suggestion box—”

Derek tried to swallow past his dry throat. “Stiles.”

Dean talked over him. “—and how is that my problem? You think restraining him would’ve worked—”

“Stiles.”

“—you could’ve at least pretended to watch him. It wouldn’t have been that—”

“ _Stiles._ ”

He couldn’t manage a yell, so he tried growling instead. It didn’t work either, but the sound in the room cut off immediately. The price he paid was a nasty coughing fit, and when he moved to roll over onto his side there was a snag on his arm. For a second he thought it was Stiles, but soon enough both hands were pressed to his shoulders, and the tug was still there. Derek rolled his head to the side, tried to peer down between Stiles’ arms as they held him to the bed.

“Holy god,” Stiles sounded more out of breath than he was. “Oh my god—oh my _god_ —you’re—Derek—”

“Astute,” Derek mumbled. He tried craning his head back, struggling to sit himself up, but even that gesture was a challenge. He was sticky with sweat and every part of him was burning up and ice cold at the same time. This was probably hell.

A mechanical beep sounded from somewhere off to his left.

“Hey, just—don’t move, okay?”

“Not a problem.” His eyelids felt heavy, already drooping down again. What little energy he had was sapping away and fast. He relaxed against the pillow by pure exhaustion more than willingness. 

Stiles laughed, and the sound suffered fissures of relief. “You’re awake.”

Derek blinked, the motion sluggish, and Stiles was just a blur from under his lashes then.

He twitched his fingers, letting out a long exhale through his nose. “You’re alive.”

Then he was under again.

\-------------------------------------------------------

Not that Derek put a whole lot of stock into what television and movies portrayed—look at werewolves in mainstream media—but coming out of a coma was nothing like what they made it out to be. It was daunting, and it took effort. He wanted it to be simple, to just wake up and be awake and to function with a semblance of normalcy, but it wasn’t. Every time he woke up, though, it got a little bit easier to deal with. He could stay awake a little bit longer, take in a little bit more, and it returned some of the color to his world when he went back under again. So, he supposed he could give up understanding how time worked for a little while. 

Stiles was there almost every time he came to, and, on the days he wasn’t, someone else was there. Usually it was more than one, actually, but sometimes it was just Deaton or just Scott. Neither one of them talked to him the way that Stiles did, or the way that Lydia or Allison had in the few times that Derek had been awake for them, but it was strangely alright. The fact that he hadn’t gotten any answers about what had happened was alright, too, because he had the feeling he would have forgotten them anyway.

Then, despite the agonizingly slow process of recovery, one day he woke up and realized that he’d been awake for hours before he was out again.

In those hours some things were explained: 

The white light he’d seen before he passed out (which was about a week ago now) was Castiel exorcising Kate and healing Stiles. 

The syringe that had been plunged into his arm was full of a very potent mixture of aconite, even stronger than the monkshood Kate had used on him years ago. It was, in fact, an absolute miracle that Derek was still alive.

The reason he was alive was because of Dr. Deaton, who had him hooked up to a dialysis machine that was cleaning the aconite out of his system. It was a long, slow process, and it had to be done carefully. The percentage of the toxin that Derek’s heart could safely pass was something “like .00000000001, seriously. Practically in the negatives” according to Stiles. Derek wasn’t sure it was an exaggeration.

Most importantly, though, was the fact that Stiles wasn’t dead. 

No gray cemetery.

No epitaph.

\-------------------------------------------------------

Dean and Castiel left when they found out that he was going to live. Dean didn’t apologize for his assumptions.

“Get this,” Stiles said, sitting on the edge of his bed. He was drumming a pair of pens against his shoe, his other leg bouncing against the floor. Derek wanted to snap at him to stop—irritated beyond logic that the asshole had left town without so much as a ‘sorry for trying to kill you’—but he didn’t. Some part of him missed the asinine fidgeting too much. “Scott, totally screwed up something in your car when all of us were racing to get you here, and Dean fixed it—”

“The _hunter_ touched my car?” Derek growled. Stiles continued on as though he hadn’t, because that was the sort of thing Stiles did.

“—turns out he drives a 1967 Impala.” Stiles grinned up at him, flipping one of the pens up in the air. Derek imagined that his intent was to catch it, but he was Stiles so he reached too early. It bounced off his hand and clattered to the floor. Derek rolled his eyes.

“And?”

“Camaro? Impala?” Derek raised his eyebrows, really just wanting the moral of the story at this point. Stiles raised his eyebrows back, both mocking and in disbelief. Then he rolled his eyes and spread his arms. “You’re both Chevy guys!”

Miraculously, Derek found the strength to kick him off the bed.

\-------------------------------------------------------

His body began to heal properly once his blood was cleaned. They’d scrubbed out all of the wolfsbane Kate put into his wounds before putting him in bed properly, and the black lines burrowed under his skin finally started to recede. He felt his strength coming back in inches, his senses pulling tighter around him and snapping the suspended state he was trapped in. His entire pack came to see him—even Erica, Boyd, and Isaac had made the trip, which was entirely unnecessary, really, but struck a chord buried inside—throughout his stay in the at the Beacon Hill’s Veterinarian’s.

The night before he was released they all crammed into Deaton’s spare room at the veterinary office. Erica, Boyd, and Isaac were leaving again the next day, but they didn’t want to miss one last chance to tease him for needing to go to a vet. His fever was gone, and he could keep food down again. They probably spent at least $100 on pizza, but it was split ten ways so it didn’t matter that much. 

Stiles sat on his bed the whole time. Although they were both too occupied with eating, and Stiles had his inane, full-body gestures to make, Derek liked having him close. He could feel Stiles’ heat soothing through his skin, to a part of him that hadn’t healed yet, and making it ache less. That was enough.

\-------------------------------------------------------

Once everyone was gone and the garbage was taken care of, Stiles peeled off his shoes and slipped onto the bed with him. He tucked his head over Derek’s heart and curled his fingers in Derek’s t-shirt. Even without asking, it was like Stiles was trying to make sure that Derek didn’t slip away in his sleep.

He remembered hearing about how Stiles’ mom had died. He remembered that she’d gone to bed with a migraine and never woke up again, and that Stiles blamed himself. He should have called an ambulance. He should have slept with her, curled up around her heartbeat, so he would have known the second it faded away. The reality was that Stiles shouldn’t have—couldn’t have—done any of the things he said he should have, could have, done.

The starker reality was how many times, in the past few days, Stiles must have been terrified that Derek falling asleep would end with him not waking up again. 

Stiles’ fingers twitched against his shirt, relaxed, then tightened again. They did it a few times before Derek, exhausted from the visit as much as from other things, threaded their fingers together over his stomach. If Stiles wanted to hold onto him, then he may as well actually _hold onto him_.

They fell asleep with each other’s heartbeats in their ears.

\-------------------------------------------------------

“So, now that I know you’re not going to heave up that sick black stuff and die on me, I think it’s a pretty good time to tell you that you’re in serious trouble.”

Stray leaves crunched under their feet as they walked through the forest, at least a quarter of a mile from his house. Stiles was a few feet ahead of him, his hands jammed deep into his pockets, and when Derek looked up he saw that Stiles had turned around to walk backwards. His eyebrows were raised, but there was a set line to his lips that Derek recognized.

The thing was, Stiles hated talking about serious things. Worse yet were the serious things that he couldn’t figure out how to put some sarcastic twist to. It meant letting his defenses go; it meant risking an argument and answers that he knew would change something that he didn’t want changed. Basically, it meant being an adult, which was scary sometimes. It was scary right now, and Derek had spent eight years tripping his way through it. That was just part of it.

He looked back down at his feet, but it was with a shrug so it looked more like he just needed to watch them to keep track of where they were going. He didn’t, but whatever. “Am I?”

“Yeah. We’re talking eternity trapped in a room with Scott and Allison kind of trouble,” Stiles continued. “Or forced vegetarian diet kind of infraction, here. This is serious business. I’ve bought veggie burgers.”

“No, you haven’t,” Derek said, raising his head just enough that he could fix Stiles with a look that said as much. 

“Okay, I haven’t, but I have a lot of coupons—”

“Stiles.”

“—and they don’t expire until the end of the year.” Stiles held his hands up. “That’s all I’m saying. Except that it’s totally a threat so you should definitely take it as one. And, you know, be afraid. I’m in your freezer—”

“ _Stiles_.”

“—replacing your meat with meat-like product.”

Stiles bumped into a tree after that, and nearly lost his balance for it. Derek reached out, grabbed a fist full of red hoodie, and steadied him. He braced his arm against the tree, above Stiles’ head. It had been a few days since he was released from the hospital, but there were still parts of him that were healing. The ones that had to watch Stiles’ eyes blink black in fluorescent lights and listened to Kate talk about the things Stiles was screaming inside his own head. The ones that felt guilty for not knowing sooner and worse for not protecting Stiles before that.

“You’re a dick,” Stiles said, after a pause. 

“I know—”

Stiles shoved him then, and it really wasn’t enough to matter but Derek let it anyway. He stepped back with the force. “No, okay? You don’t. Because you don’t know what it’s like having your boyfriend’s mass murdering ex-girlfriend-thing trap you inside your head, and then have to watch yourself torture the guy you— _you_.”

Derek ground his teeth together to keep from flinching. “I know. I should’ve protected you.”

“Protected me?” Stiles huffed a disbelieving snort, pressing his fingers into his chest, then flinging his arm towards Derek. “You think that’s what this is about? She was a _demon_ , Derek, even if you were around when it happened you couldn’t have done anything.”

“You don’t know that—”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you—”

“ _Yes._ ” There was something grave and pained in Stiles’ voice, strong enough to yank on the threads connecting Derek’s nerves to his. He looked up, but Stiles could only meet his eyes for a few seconds before he was looking away. Then he crossed his arms, gripped into his hoodie sleeves like he was scratching at his arms. “I do.”

Derek took a step forward, wanted to touch him, but kept his hands in his pockets. He didn’t know why, but it felt wrong. It was as though Stiles was burning at a thousand degrees, but Derek would get frostbite, of all things, from touching him.

So he exhaled through his nose and pressed his lips together instead. “What happened?”

Stiles’ shoulders rose and fell with his breathing, and he focused off somewhere that Derek didn’t even try to see. He was looking for the start of something he didn’t want to say.

“You remember that bed? The one with the—the straps on it?” Stiles’ voice tightened, he rolled his tongue over his lips and clawed at his arm as subtly as possible. “When Kate killed those people she didn’t…use _me_ to do it. She tied me down and—” He took in a breath, and the sound made _Derek’s_ chest ache. But he couldn’t move, all he could do was stand there and watch the twitch in Stiles’ jaw as it tightened. “She said she couldn’t lose track of her favorite meatsuit.”

Panic attacks didn’t happen in sudden bursts. That was something that Derek had learned over time. They were gradual monsters, eventually manifesting in too-light intakes of air and too-hard heartbeats. He could smell them, sometimes, but other times he couldn’t. Other times he just watched, knowing Stiles was talking himself into one without being able to stop it. The biggest challenge was getting Stiles to talk about it, to stop hiding everything where people—where Derek—couldn’t see.

Stiles dropped, but it wasn’t a collapse. He just ducked down so he was squatting and held himself in the tight position. Finally the cement Derek was stuck in cracked enough to let him move. He knelt next to him, wrapped an arm across Stiles’ shoulders as he panted.

“Talk.” It was an order, but he framed it in as much calm as he could muster. “Stiles, _talk_.”

“I just—I could feel it—whenever she came back,” he struggled. “The memories. And then you—god, Derek, she wanted to do so much _worse_ to you…”

Stiles talked about Kate’s gloating, about how the murders were done. He avoided any other malicious plans Kate had for Derek, but it was fine. Soon, Stiles’ attention turned to matching his breathing with Derek’s, until the world settled around them. The bubble that always popped up, that pulled all of Derek’s focus and attention into Stiles in these moments, expanded until it encompassed the area surrounding them. He felt his own heartbeat steady with Stiles’, beating in time together.

“It wasn’t about protecting me,” Stiles shook his hands off and moved to stand up. He wobbled a bit, but swatted Derek’s hand away from trying to steady him. “It was about the mate thing. And don’t tell me you were going to tell me because you weren’t. Kate said that you had to have known for months—that’s like, a seriously overdue library book, Derek—and you didn’t say a thing. Not even an ‘Oh hey, have we discussed that werewolves mate? Because that might be a little bit relevant in the near future hint-hint-nudge-nudge’.”

“I _was_ going to tell you—”

“—bullshit—”

“—just not yet.”

“Why?” Stiles was walking away from him now, continuing back along the not-quite path they’d been taking. “Hoping something better will come along so you don’t have to settle for some twitchy kid?”

Derek snarled. “That’s not it at all, and you know it.”

Stiles spun around, spreading his arms out. “No, I don’t, Derek. You know why? Because no matter how many times I threaten to neuter you for keeping stuff from me, get this, _you still keep stuff from me!_ Figure that equation out!” 

Normally he would have stormed after Stiles, shoved him into a tree or the ground or anywhere that he could just hold him down and give himself time to explain. But after everything with Kate—after the panic attack they’d just gone through, and it was them, together, because Derek could still feel the rhythm of Stiles’ heartbeat in his chest—he just knew that it would make things worse. So he just stopped following, watched Stiles tramp a few more feet ahead, flinging out his arms to knock away twigs and vines.

“Ohio.” Stiles stopped, and Derek’s heart twisted in his chest. He wondered, absently, if Stiles could feel it the way Derek could feel his. Probably not, and the thought was only half as comforting as it should have been. “You found out you got accepted to your first choice college in Ohio the day I was going to tell you.”

Stiles was silent, but his scent was a cocktail of things. Impossible to read, so Derek pressed on around it. “I wasn’t going to tie you down to Beacon Hills with something you might not be ready for. Something you might not even—”

“Want?”

Knots formed in his intestines, each one a sour memory for who he was and how he got there. He nodded, despite the fact Stiles couldn’t see it, his head sinking a bit lower. “Yeah.”

Stiles told him months ago to stop thinking that he didn’t deserve him, and Derek had. But deserving someone didn’t always mean they were the one you got in the end. Nothing guaranteed that. In fact, nothing guaranteed anything, and that was kind of the most fucked up part about life. He wanted to think he was used to coming up short and being let down, but he wasn’t. It wasn’t like pain or endurance—it wasn’t something he could build an immunity for. It was just a convoluted mess of things that he would never be prepared for, no matter how much he tried.

“Since when do you get to decide that stuff for me?” Stiles’ voice was a little clearer, a little closer. “Oh, right, you don’t. Because when we got into this whole relationship thing I didn’t sign over my life and decisions to you in some kind of weird pre-relationship, oh-you’re-the-big-strong-alpha-just-tell-me-what-to-do contract. You know I think that stuff is a load of crap.”

“You’ve made it abundantly clear,” Derek said, but it wasn’t a diversion. He didn’t do diversions, not with Stiles, anyway. “I don’t want you to regret this.”

“And by ‘this’ you mean ‘us,’ right? Don’t answer that.”

“I’m your first serious relationship.”

“And how many ‘serious relationships’ have _you_ had since Kate Argent?” 

Kate had been such a taboo topic over the past two years that it was strange having her be almost casual conversation now. It was a wound that Derek peeled back as seldom as possible, and he wanted to be furious. But it was only because Stiles was right. He always got angry when Stiles was right.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Stiles moved in front of him; Derek listened to the sounds, but it was jarring to look up and see him standing right there. He looked tired, exasperated, and worn out. Derek hated himself for every small crime he’d committed to add to the lines along the edges of his mouth and in his forehead. He hated every tense muscle he’d participated in winding up. He just _hated_.

“You’re a dick,” Stiles repeated. His eyes were down tilted, and Derek felt arms wrap around his waist. “An big, emotionally constipated werewolf _dick_ that never listens.”

He breathed out, a strangled chuckle tacked to the end of the sound. “I know.”

“You’re going to tell me anything and everything I need to know about this whole werewolf-mate thing, and then you’re going to make me coffee while I stay up until 4AM researching it anyway to make _sure_ you’ve told me anything and everything.”

Derek dropped his forehead against Stiles’. “Deal.”

\-------------------------------------------------------

After a bit more walking, they took a break near the ravine that marked one of the edges of Derek’s territory. Stiles sat down and rested back against a rock, his pant legs pulled up and his feet wet from the water. Derek leaned back into the space between his spread thighs, dropping his head against Stiles’ collarbone. It was getting late, the air cooling down, but there wasn’t the lingering worry about finding a body in the woods, so they weren’t in much of a rush.

Derek started telling him what he knew—what he remembered from his parents being together and what little Laura could tell him—but he barely gleaned the surface. A few beats of silence passed, filled only by the pace of their hearts and the sounds of the woods around them. 

For a minute, Derek let himself just think that a truce was possible with a universe that had massively fucked him over all his life. He wanted to think that this would work out, in some way, because so much else in his life just…hadn’t. He was okay with that on the good days, and in moments like this, but they were the only things that made the rest of it worth dealing with. Things were alright now, at least for a little while.

“You’re sure about this?” But old doubts squirmed to the surface of his mind, settling in all the places they used to occupy. He was being unfair and selfish. Stiles still had an entire life to find someone else—and really, so did he. Even if the wolf inside snarled at the mere idea of it.

Thirty seconds passed, then a minute.

“Stiles?”

“Huh?” Stiles’ fingers stopped in the pattern they’d been drumming over his chest. “Sorry, I was just thinking that I have… _totally_ lost that job at the library.”

His heart stuttered—he was lying—but Derek found a smile tugging at the edge of his lips. It was an answer all the same.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, the epilogue. I can't believe I finished something.
> 
> I just want to thank all of you for your support and taking the time to read this fanfiction. I put a lot of thought and work into it, and it's the first fanfic I've finished since, like, '07, I think. I really enjoyed writing it, so I hope that you all enjoyed reading it! 
> 
> I've gotten a few comments on how this will influence Stiles in the future, and I can promise that he isn't mystically magically over it by the power of Derek's healing arms or anything. But demon possession isn't something that someone just gets over, and I think it'll be with Stiles for the rest of his life. Who knows, if I decide to continue in this universe, maybe I could play with that theme. But for now, this is it!
> 
> Thanks again for reading. : )

Derek trekked back up the stairs for the last time. Or, at least, Stiles had led him to believe it would be the last time, but in the past hour he’d heard “This is the last one, I swear” seven times. He was counting. He had some designs on pointing that out to Stiles when he got up there, but the second he stepped into the door frame they were punched out of him along with his air.

Stiles’ room was empty.

Well, it wasn’t. His desk was in place and so was his bed with the covers neatly made. The dresser was where it had always been, as was the wall decal of a snowboarder that had never been properly explained to him. The furniture was all where it had been, more or less, for the past two years. But the furniture wasn’t what filled a room. Not really.

Everything was neat and organized in a way that Stiles never kept his room, even in the hours following a thorough clean. Stiles’ definition of ‘thorough’ had always been a bit sketchy at best, anyway. It smelled of him, but the presence was gone. There weren’t any pens littering his desk; there weren’t any papers about this month’s monster scattered on the floor; there wasn’t even the sleeve of a T-shirt sticking out of the middle drawer of his dresser. The books were all stacked neatly on their shelves, not a paper out of alignment, and nothing but the lamp on the bedside table was plugged in. A gentle wind was stirring the curtains through the open window.

“Hey, you gonna help me with this or just stand there and look pretty?” Stiles appeared from behind the door balancing two plastic totes, one atop the other, stuffed with clothes. They were clearly on their way to getting the best of him. “Not that I mind the view, or anything, but these are kinda heavy and I could really use a pretty view with a side of werewolf strength right about now.”

Derek stepped forward and took them both—his fingers grazing Stiles’—without a grunt of effort. He watched as Stiles slung his backpack over his shoulder and picked up a third tote stuffed with towels and other shiny new dorm accessories purchased in the last month. 

“See, told you this was the last of it,” Stiles said, pulling the door open a little more with his foot. “All those other times I was just testing you. Gotta keep those werewolf reflexes sharp—you need to be on your toes in case any monsters pop up with poor packing skills.”

Derek rolled his eyes. “Shut up.”

There was a finality in the trip down the stairs, down the walkway, and to the driveway where Stiles’ Jeep was parked. It was already packed to the sheet metal with other totes and bags, but there was a sliver of available space for the remaining three totes. Stiles would have to stuff his bag somewhere in the front with him, but Derek was pretty sure that was the plan anyway. 

They stood back for a few minutes as Mr. Stilinski forced the door closed, making sure nothing would fall out during the drive. The Jeep wasn’t the most practical for traveling the distance from California to Ohio, but Stiles had failed in talking Mr. Stilinski into just getting a new car when he was there. Not that he seemed that heartbroken over it—the Jeep had seen him through a lot. It’d seen both of them through a lot, when Derek thought about it.

Mr. Stilinski turned around, but Derek was only half aware of the thirty seconds he spent looking at them. He was too busy watching Stiles tie his sneaker.

“I’m going to go inside and make sure I’ve got everything,” Mr. Stilinski muttered. Stiles stood up, and Mr. Stilinski clapped a hand on his son’s shoulder as he passed. “Make it quick, kiddo. We gotta get on the road.”

“You got it,” Stiles called after him. Derek’s eyes dropped down to look somewhere about Stiles’ knees before the teen’s attention even came back to him again. “Really? This is our big good-bye scene and you’re going to spend it staring at my _knees_? Seriously? Don’t go into acting, Derek, you ruin all the dramatic scenes.”

Derek couldn’t think of anything to say, and he wasn’t in the habit of bantering when his mind was so stuffy with other thoughts. But Stiles didn’t need an invitation; he never had.

The stiffness in his jaw went away the second Stiles’ stepped closer. Fingers curled into the back of his shirt in the same moment that his curled into the back of Stiles’. He was no more dragged to Stiles than he dragged Stiles to him. It was a mutual pull, a natural gravitation, and the tug forced the rest of his rigidity to drop out of him like shedding a weight. The steady approach of this moment didn’t make the reality any easier to endure, but, then, he wasn’t surprised.

“It’s just a year, dude,” Stiles started, his chin resting on Derek’s shoulder. “Not even. It’s more like nine months. No big deal. Women carry babies around for nine months, and that’s got to be _way_ harder living thirty-two hours and twenty minutes away by car—”

“Stiles.”

“Less than that by plane—”

“ _Stiles._ ”

“Thank god for those PSEO classes, though. And that the credits all transferred—ow!” Derek squeezed him hard enough to take some of the air out of his lungs. “Okay, okay! Have I ever told you that I prefer the _kissing_ method over the _squeezing_ one?”

“You don’t get to pick.”

“Not even when I’ll be gone for a year?”

“Nine months.”

Stiles huffed. “Damn you for listening.”

They stood for a few more minutes, Derek drinking in Stiles’ scent and Stiles doing god-knew-what, before the hug got awkward and they pulled back a bit. That was an unfortunate trait of hugs. No matter who it was, they always got awkward after too long. Awkward and uncomfortable.

But Stiles rectified the lingering unease by pressing his mouth to Derek’s and happily licking at his lips until Derek let him in. The kiss was long and warm, even in its definiteness. With each nip and press, each small breath in the spaces between their lips or through their noses, the world was pushed away for a little bit longer. Derek didn’t try to fool himself into thinking that anything around them would change, that something as small as a kiss would make Stiles give up his first-choice college. He wouldn’t have wanted that for Stiles anyway. There was no point in the potential stretched out ahead of them if he was going to demand that either one of them hide from it.

Breaking the kiss was like coming out of his coma, gradual and punctuated. For each little bit they pulled away, one of them surged forward to drag it out just a second more, until the contact was so shallow that it was just their noses brushing together and the breath mingling between them. 

“You sure you don’t want to give me your jacket?” Stiles asked. “You’re really, totally 100% on that? Because I’m still willing to accept it with an apology for your stubbornness and stupidity.”

“Nine months,” Derek repeated. “That’s nine months for you to live your life without me around— _any_ part of me—and figure out if I’m really what you want.”

“Jerk.”

Derek growled, but there wasn’t any malice in it. “I should make you graduate college first.”

“I’d be climbing you like a tree by then.”

“ _Stiles._ ”

Stiles sighed, and there was something frustrated and resigned in the sound. “I know, I know. It’s not nine months to test my fidelity; it’s nine months to live my life Hale-free.”

“And if you decide it’s not what you want—”

“—which I _won’t_ , by the way—”

“—then we’ll deal with that when it happens.”

“If,” Stiles corrected. “And that’s a huge, Chrysler Building sized ‘if.’”

“If,” Derek conceded. 

He tried not to hang his heart up on the word, because he’d hung his heart up on words once before. It left him with ashes and guilt. 

But Stiles was, unsurprisingly, different. He compelled both halves of Derek to be whole. Stiles’ personal chaos forced some order inside him. And it didn’t make any sense but, for once, maybe that was alright. Besides, it wasn't like he had another option available, and he was okay with that. Or he was going to be.

The sound of the door closing off to his right meant that their time was up, and Derek tried to ignore the yank on his heart, like it was a loose tooth connected to the door handle. Their lips met again, chaste this time, before Stiles stepped back.

“I’ll see you in nine months,” Stiles said, heading towards the driver’s side of his car.

Derek walked back to the street and lingered near his Camaro as the Jeep pulled out and headed down the street. Stiles was too busy talking to his dad to look at him, but that was better anyway. After a few minutes and a slow breath, he popped open the door and got in.

Halfway to home, as he was coming down from the high of Stiles’ scent, he realized that his jacket was missing from the passenger seat.

  
**THE END**   



End file.
